Whistleblowing?

There was a piece in yesterday's Guardian about whistleblowing trouble in a hospital somewhere in Suffolk.

I didn't read it with any care, but I was left with the thought that hospitals are unlikely to work very well if surgeons are continually worrying about whether their next mistake or error of judgement is going to find its way to some conspicuous place in a newspaper. And the same is going to be true of any demanding profession - with the difference that the great British public get much more excited about schools and hospitals than most other fields of endeavour. Excited in the sense that news of this sort sells newspapers, generates clicks, excited likes on Facebook and excited tweets on Twitter. And generates revenue for the tech titans. What is subsequently described as a tsunami of anger and fury.

My understanding is that in both the armed forces and the civil service there is a chain of command in these matters. If you think something is going wrong you should complain to the appropriate point in that chain of command, and if you are not satisfied escalate up the chain. But if your complaint is found to be unjustified or vexatious, don't be surprised if your career falters. And the higher up you have gone, the more faltering there is likely to be. A sort of double or quits.

And complaining to some outsider, like a journalist, is very much a last resort. And also something of a (possibly rewarded) cop-out - so not something a conscientious objector should do until he or she has conscientiously exhausted the proper channels. And if you go to the press without so doing, don't be surprised if you get hauled up before personnel for possible disciplinary action.

PS: I don't suppose the great British public is any worse than most others in this regard. But I don't know any other.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/11/city-boys-episode-1.html. The only place that whistleblowers seem to have popped up before. I had thought there were others and the search continues.