The Health Minister, Mike Nesbitt, has announced a consultation into draft policy proposals for the introduction of a ‘Being Open Framework’, along with a Statutory Duty of Candour in Northern Ireland. The introduction of a duty of candour in Northern Ireland has long been the subject of debate. It was first recommended by Mr Justice O’Hara as part of his report on the Independent Inquiry into Hyponatraemia Related Deaths in 2018. One of the Inquiry’s 96 recommendations was that a statutory duty of candour for organisations should be introduced, along with a separate statutory duty of candour for individual staff, with criminal sanctions attached for breach.
This led to a 20 week long public consultation in 2021, following which the then Health Minister, Robin Swann, determined that the initial focus should be on developing a policy for a “Being Open Framework” for the health and social care system. It is this Framework which is now finally available for consultation.
There has been a statutory Duty of Candour in place in England for NHS Trusts and other healthcare providers since 2015, with similar legislative requirements also applying in Scotland and Wales. In the Republic of Ireland, the Patient Safety (Notifiable Incidents and Open Disclosure) Act came into force in 2023. Essentially, these various pieces of legislation require that healthcare organisations and all individuals working for them are required by law to be open and honest in their dealings with patients and the public. In addition individual practitioners are subject to a professional duty of candour by virtue of their codes of practice, such requirement already being place in Northern Ireland.
At O’Reilly Stewart we strongly support the introduction of a duty of candour in Northern Ireland without further delay. The protections that such a duty will afford to patients are to be welcomed and it is essential that patients in this jurisdiction are placed on a similar footing as those throughout the UK and Ireland as soon as possible. It is a regrettable feature of our current system that all too often it is for patients and next of kin to seek an explanation as to what happened when something goes wrong, that such a process is dogged by delay and that it leads to an unsatisfactory conclusion. A statutory requirement, imposing a obligation on the healthcare provider to tell a patient when something has gone wrong, to apologise and to put matters right, if possible, is long overdue in Northern Ireland.
The consultation remains open until 21st March 2025 and can be accessed at Department of Health ‘Being Open Framework’ Consultation Questionnaire – NI Direct – Citizen Space