REACH is calling for local NHS clinical members of staff who have written to it anonymously to express concerns, to get in direct contact with them via the Contact Form on the REACH website.
Michael Ratcliffe, the Chairman of REACH, expanded on the call for the members of staff to get in direct contact:
“We have very recently received an anonymous letter that appears to be from members of staff at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and which on the face of it is, very concerning. The sender of the four page letter is clearly very well informed and raises quite a number of concerns, which are centred around two main points. The first relates to safety concerns around Emergency General Surgery and questions whether these are credible and if so why nothing has been done about it. The second serious concern relates to the lack of clinical and public engagement in reconfiguration changes to an NHS Service at Gloucester Royal Hospital”.
“We are of course very keen to look into these concerns further and where appropriate raise these with the Trust and other interested parties and this why we really need to speak directly to the authors of this letter, which is why we are making this public call for them to get into touch. We can of course give them absolute assurances that we will at no point reveal their identity and this is reflected in REACH not openly publishing the anonymous letter”.