A WHISTLEBLOWER has been vindicated after winning a five-year battle to force a health board to release reports into serious incidents.
Psychiatric nurse Rab Wilson, who worked for Ayrshire and Arran NHS Board, said he had been "framed and suspended" for three months after questioning his then employers' claims it did not have any critical incident review plans – apart from one it had already given him.
He turned to the Information Commissioner, who yesterday lambasted it for failing to release the documents, calling the case perhaps "the most serious catalogue of failings" he has dealt with.
Mr Wilson, of New Cumnock, Ayrshire, said: "Was it worth it? If you ask my wife she may say otherwise. It's been a very trying five years and at one point I was framed and suspended for three months accused of bullying because of my questioning all of this."
In his final report before standing down today, Kevin Dunion heavily criticised the board for the way it handled Mr Wilson's inquiries.
In September 2006 a patient absconded from the hospital where Mr Wilson worked and he became concerned that he did not receive a copy of the resulting report. When he finally got the document he believed it contained inaccuracies. He asked for copies of all incident reports since January 2005, only to be told there were none.
When the Commissioner became involved the board found 56 such documents on the disk drive of a member of staff who had been absent from work.
This prompted scathing criticism: "The Commissioner wishes to strongly express his concern that, given the importance of these documents in ensuring that lessons are learned from serious incidents, and action taken to prevent future such events, and given NHS Ayrshire and Arran's stated policy on the action plans, that these action plans were only located by chance, and could not, according to NHS Ayrshire and Arran, be located following detailed searches of its records management system."
John Burns, chief executive of the board, said: "We acknowledge that the Commissioner's criticism of NHS Ayrshire & Arran's records management system prior to 2009 is justified, and apologise that Mr Wilson has had to go to significant lengths to receive the information he requested."
The Government said the breaches were "unacceptable".
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