BMA junior doctors leader joins Jeremy Hunt’s patient safety charity

Jeeves Wijesuriya, former chair of the British Medical Association’s junior doctors committee, is among the nine people who will serve on the advisory board of the Patient Safety Watch charity.

Mr Hunt has also announced that Sir Robert Francis, who led the Mid Staffs inquiry; England’s former chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies; former medical director of the NHS, Sir Bruce Keogh; and Dame Marianne Griffiths, chief executive of Western Sussex Hospitals Foundation Trust, will also serve on the advisory board.

Dr Wijesuriya was chair of the junior doctor committee during part of the very high profile contract row with the government, including when strikes took place, while Mr Hunt was health secretary. 

In 2016, Dr Wijesuriya blamed Mr Hunt for the strikes and told TalkRadio the health secretary “[wasn’t] interested in finding a negotiated settlement”. In 2017, at a march in London to protest against NHS spending cuts, he said the health services “[faced] £26bn of health and social care cuts due to political decisions”.

Mr Hunt announced Patient Safety Watch last year to establish data to report on levels of patient safety and avoidable harm in healthcare, and commission research from leading universities. He has previously said he will invest hundreds of thousands of pounds in the charity over several years. 

He told HSJ: “Patient safety has moved massively up the agenda because of the issue of nosocomial infections that have affected both staff and patients during covid.

“This high powered advisory board will help Patient Safety Watch make measured but decisive interventions so that we get better at learning from what inevitably goes wrong - not just in a pandemic but in normal times as well.”