Dr. Jennifer Creese:

The guardian initiative is a national framework in the UK across all the public sector areas. Each NHS trust is mandated to have a speak up guardian within the staff. Sometimes it is a member of staff and sometimes it is a member of the public who has been trained and comes in to serve as an employee of the hospital trust.

Doctors, nurses and any staff of the hospital can, therefore, raise any issues they feel are about patient safety, in particular. That link between working conditions and patient safety is a really important one that many people and even many doctors overlook. As was mentioned before, a doctor working really long hours is a patient safety issue. A doctor not being able to be off sick is a patient safety issue.

All these are recognised by the NHS as things it needs to hear about because then they can be actioned appropriately and keep patients safe. So, yes, the speak up guardian model within the NHS frameworks and the UK public sector generally is a great model about which it would be very easy to find out more and look towards implementing.