What the NHS really needs though is not more management, but better management
Post-war Labour prime minister, Clement Atlee, was a man of few words. A junior minister, who had just been sacked, asked him why. ‘Not up to the job’, was alleged to have been the terse reply.
I cannot claim to have read the three volumes of Robert Francis QC’s Mid Staffs report, nor indeed all of its 290 recommendations. From what I have read, however, it could be summed up in Atlee’s four terse words. Those involved, be they doctors, managers or nurses, were ‘not up to the job’.
