Patients are too often “gaslighted, dismissed, and fobbed off” when they raise concerns about NHS care, the patient safety commissioner has said. Henrietta Hughes said the “patient’s anecdote is the canary in the coal mine” of what is happening in the NHS and is “the thing that tells us there’s something going wrong”. She added: “But too often we hear about patients who have raised concerns being gaslighted, dismissed, and fobbed off.
” In an interview with the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Ms Hughes, who took up her role in 2022, said women in some cases had been patronised and had their concerns dismissed. Her role, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care, was created after a recommendation in a report examining three scandals: hormone pregnancy tests that are thought to be associated with birth defects and miscarriages; sodium valproate, an antiepileptic drug that can cause birth defects when taken by pregnant women; and pelvic mesh implants, which have been linked to serious complications. Ms Hughes said that, too often, patients raising concerns were passed off as “difficult women”.
She added: “It shows a very dismissive and very old fashioned, patronising attitude to patients who have identified problems and need to have their voices heard.” While Ms Hughes, a former medical director at NHS England and national guardian for the NHS, does not examine individual cases, she wants to simplify the way people can access help and make the.
