Ms Margaret Murphy:

I would like the committee members to put themselves in the shoes of someone who has experienced harm in health care and to ask what they would want for themselves. Would they really want the physician and the organisation to have the option to speak honestly to them or would they want the assurance that the physician or the organisation must speak honestly to them? If that is what the members would want for themselves, it is incumbent on them to make it possible for the rest of us. That is my stake in the ground as it were.

Furthermore, mandatory open disclosure will actually support staff rather than cause them to go underground. It will move the relevance of the training much higher on individuals' agendas and I imagine the uptake of training will increase. Staff themselves will demand high-quality training because it needs to be in the contract. This is part of how we do things in the health care system.

I mentioned Ms Linda Kenney and Dr. Rick van Pelt in the United States. He was the anaesthesiologist who made the error. This is all about people, specifically doctors who, having done harm, find themselves in vulnerable situations. It must be one of the most horrific experiences to know one has contributed to the death of an individual. The instinct is fight or flight, but we are better than the animals and we need to rise above that. Dr. Rick van Pelt connected with a part of himself he did not know existed. He so desperately wanted to speak to his patient. He was told by insurers, the hospital and colleagues not to go there and that he did not know the can of worms he would open. He went along with this advice for a while but eventually could not take it any longer and doctor and patient met. It was a difficult meeting between the doctor and the woman he almost killed, but he said that on that day, with great relief, an 800 lb gorilla got off his back. That is some image, to be toting around an 800 lb gorilla 24/7, and one can get shut of it by having a decent conversation with another human being. The sky will not fall. Together, Ms Linda Kenney and Dr. Rick van Pelt founded the organisation Medically Induced Trauma Support Services, MITSS, which supports patient, family and clinician when things go wrong. Good things can, therefore, come out of such cases. I have seen them present jointly at conferences and they are a wonder to behold. To avoid the wriggle room and confusion, that must be how things are done here. The members of the committee are the legislators. We ask them to legislate.