Nurse wins staff shortages whistleblowing case

A judgment published last week found that Mark Temperton, a mental health nurse, was “subjected to detriment” after having made a “protected disclosure” during his agency shift at Greater Manchester Mental Health Foundation Trust’s Atherleigh Park Hospital.

Mr Temperton, who is also employed by the Priory Group as a regulatory inspector as well as doing ad-hoc work for the Care Quality Commission, worked as an agency mental health nurse for Blackstone Recruitment and was booked to work a night shift in a psychiatric intensive care unit (Priestners Unit) at Atherleigh Park on 14 October 2022.

He raised concerns after a patient, brought in by the police, was put “immediately” into seclusion because of staff shortages. Mr Temperton subsequently raised it with the nurse in charge and with a locum consultant psychiatrist but the patient was kept in seclusion.

According to the Mental Health Act’s Code of Practice, seclusion “should not be used as a punishment or a threat, or because of a shortage of staff”. Serious concerns were also raised about the trust’s Edenfield Centre in September 2022 by BBC Panorama, one of them being use of inappropriate seclusion.

The psychiatrist said Mr Temperton had not raised the wrongful seclusion with him, but the judge ruled that he had.

The mental health sector has the highest vacancy rate in the NHS at around 11.7 per cent, and there is particular pressure on staff working in secure units. 

When Mr Temperton arrived for his next shift on 16 October he was told to go to a different ward. However, on this ward, there had been a covid outbreak and because of multiple long-term health conditions Mr Temperton could not safely work there. He also submitted a claim of disability discrimination because of this but this was dismissed by the tribunal.

Cancelled shifts

Evidence provided to the tribunal found there had been previous discussions about staffing requirements in the hospital and the judgment reported a “clear intention” that one of the nurses on the PICU would need to go to cover another ward.

However, an email was later sent by the ward manager, informing Blackstone Recruitment that Mr Temperton’s future shifts “will have to be cancelled”.

“Apologies we have taken a staff member on for a block booking so all shifts are now covered,” the email said.

The judgment found the trust produced no documents demonstrating the block booking in question, and the member of staff referred to has not been identified.

A week later Mr Temperton submitted a complaint to the CQC about the inappropriate seclusion, to which the trust responded. The judgment found the trust then “heard no more from the CQC”.

The judgment concluded that Mr Temperton was entitled to a “remedy” for the detriment claim and said this would be held on 12 July.

Investing in FTSU

Although GMMHT said it could not comment on this specific case until after the remedy hearing, Paul Lewis-Grundy, associate director of corporate governance, said: “It is absolutely vital that staff feel confident and safe to speak up, with no detrimental impact to themselves or their career and prospects. Over the past two years, we have invested significantly, and taken a number of steps, to support this across GMMH.”

“Looking to the future, we are committed to building on these improvements by delivering a new FTSU strategy and FTSU policy, reviewing existing policies to ensure we take every opportunity to state we will not tolerate detriment as a result of speaking up, and introducing improvements to our investigation processes to further support staff who say they have suffered because of speaking up.”