What do stories tell us about whistleblowing conflict in the NHS in England and its resolution?
View/ Open
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This thesis examines NHS whistleblowing as conflict from the perspective of story and narrative theory to seek insights about the underlying nature of whistleblowing conflict. It aims to contribute to more informed interventions for the resolution of the conflict and more efficient outcomes. Publicly available data suggest that whistleblowers in the NHS in England suffer retaliation causing personal suffering and damage to their careers and career prospects. Cases tend to end in damaging and unsatisfactory litigation and there seem to be few acceptable real-world alternatives to those outcomes. To understand more about the nature of NHS whistleblowing conflict the study draws upon in-depth in-person narrative-based interviews with 21 participants grouped into three constituencies of whistleblowers, NHS managers and independent third parties in order to seek multiple, and group, narrative perspectives. Ancillary data was obtained from over 100 NHS Foundation Trusts by means of freedom of information requests made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the FOIA”). Whistleblowing is analysed as conflict, viewed through a model of dispute emergence, framed around two core aspects of whistleblowing, the wrongdoing and the whistleblower. Participant and FOIA data is then analysed from a perspective of storytelling and narrative theory. The study concludes from this analysis that certain aspects of whistleblowing conflict may be insufficiently recognised and greater attention should be paid to them in order to promote or to design improved or different interventions for the benefit of all parties. These aspects include the need for interventions to take greater account of wrongdoing, and its subjective nature, in seeking resolution of whistleblowing conflict; also, the need to address more deliberately the emotional and psychological aspects of the conflict perhaps through narrative approaches given, as the study argues, the embedded nature of stories and storytelling in the NHS whistleblowing setting.
Authors
Lampard, CCollections
- Theses [4164]