A former senior nurse at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich has come forward with a fresh tale of the toxic management at the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust and their treatment of whistleblowers in the wake of the tribunal verdict involving staff nurse Francisca Holmes. Francisca lost her case against the trust management over her treatment but the judge ruled she had genuine whistleblowing concerns when she was told of a patient found dead in Ward 22.

This is the same health trust still involved in a ten year battle with Dr Chris Day,  a junior doctor, who in 2014 brought a still on going case on two ” avoidable deaths” in their intensive care unit. It is the same trust where a senior communications director deliberately destroyed 90,000 emails that could have been used in Dr Day’s defence during a tribunal hearing and escaped censure from the presiding judge.

Thurdy Campbell, a black senior nurse of Jamaican nationality, had worked for 22 years at the hospital as a senior sister in their accident and emergency department and manager of combined wards 22 and 23. She was dismissed on 17 May 2022.

Her grievance letter claims: “I was subjected to the following: work place mobbing, severe episodes of
harassment and discriminative treatments, miscarriage of justice , coercive control, defamation of character, endangered working environment , abuse of power of position for personal gain and recrimination after making a series of protected acts and qualifying disclosures to NMC [Nursing and Midwifery Council]25 May 2021.

Senior party members from the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust Kelly Lewis-Towler, director of operations for acute and emergency medicine; Meera Nair ,director of people and board member, Victoria Tyler ,head of employee relations; HR Team and Investigation Managers colluded in wrongdoing by protecting the perpetrators and subjected me to series of detriments.”

Some of the managers she accuses appear in the same case as Francisca Holmes such as line manager Rodney Katandika and Ann Marie Coiley, the director of nursing.

Matters came to a head when she was manager of the new combined Ward 22 and 23 – the ward where Francisca Holmes was told that an elderly patient was found dead. She raised the issue of patient safety but had no serious response. Six months after this incident Thurdy sent a further email saying “Clinical concerns relating to issues affecting patient’s safety, staffing, staff well-being and the working environment of Ward 22” escalating this to senior line management. Straight after this the trust launched a disciplinary hearing against her leading eventually to her dismissal the following May.

She was certainly a thorn in the side of senior management. An internal email from Kelly Lewis-Towler to other senior managers, sent on 28 July 2021 accuses her of intimidation and claims senior staff were ill with workplace stress, declining to return from holidays, and claiming she cannot adequately support them and is facing ” a mass exit of staff”. All because she raised patient safety issues. She turns this on its head by saying patient safety is at risk because of the behaviour of Thurdy.

It is no wonder that during Francisca Holmes’ tribunal the trust did not produce her as a witness, even though she was well placed to comment on the situation since she was ward manager where the patient death happened because it would have revealed her warning of patient safety and provided evidence to the judge of bullying of Francisca by other senior staff.

Capsticks role in the trust

Thurdy’s grievance letter also exposes another worrying feature. Not only does Capsticks have a role as the trust’s lawyer to refute Thurdy’s claims at the employment tribunal but they have a major investigating role inside the trust for handling claims and disputes. So the firm has advance notice of any trouble coming managment’s way from staff and can intervene to help refute it and be in poll position should the person takes the trust to a tribunal. The firm are basically judge and jury in whistleblowing cases at Greenwich and Lewisham NHS trust.

Worse than that the grievance letter reveals that Capsticks attempted to force Thurdy to sign a non disclosure agreement – not as part of a normal procedure to get a settlement – but while the firm were involved in the internal investigation. Fortunately she resisted or otherwise you would be banned from reading about this case.

Thurdy lost the first round of employment tribunal cases and is awaiting the result of an appeal.

Her dismissal also nearly led to her being evicted from her home. She now has got a new job at less pay than in the NHS but in a much better enviornment.

My final point is that given the current state of the NHS it can ill afford to lose experienced nurses and doctors by maligning them in whistleblowing cases – like Thurdy and Francisca – and Martyn Pitman, the popular and competent obstetrician in Hampshire and Dr David Drew at Morecambe Bay. That’s why the treatment of whistleblowers needs urgent reform.

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