Scotland’s NHS is putting reputation before patient safety – officials

He added that a survey of 17,000 BMA Scotland members found the problem was “absolutely across the board” and that change had to come from the “very top”.

“The culture is set at the top, at the very top, so it’s really important that whoever is first minister in Scotland and the cabinet secretary for health, they set the culture, as do the MSPs in Holyrood,” he said.

“The message has to be clear that those clinicians, those doctors who raise concerns about patient safety and wrongdoing, will be listened to, they will be rewarded, they will be encouraged, and the focus will not go on to them, but it will go on to the patient safety and wrongdoing concerns that they raise.”

Scotland’s patient safety commissioner Karen Titchener had a similar view.

Although she said she could not make sweeping statements about all health boards, in her experience “it would appear” reputation was placed above patient safety and there was a “‘nothing to see here’ culture”.

Health boards, she said, sometimes turned on patients when they made complaints.