A doctors’ leader played down the significance of hygiene inspections – claiming they lacked “commonsense”.
Aberdeen orthopaedic surgeon Simon Barker, chairman of the BMA’s Scottish consultants committee, said he backed efforts to improve safety.
But he warned over-zealous officials were often guilty of seeking “mindless” changes which took no account of the realities of hospital life.
He said: “I’m 100% behind the mitigation of risks. But we’ve got to do it in a way that allows us to do our job and doesn’t put fear into staff.
“The way that they are marking, it is not commonsense. It is lacks any evidence.”
He said it was demoralising to name and shame “failed” wards on that evidence.
“The reasons failures happen aren’t necessarily because of a real risk.
“They are a risk interpreted by somebody not really operating with a great deal of commonsense in that situation.
“That’s just life. But the way in which it is done, the zeal with which it is done, sometimes isn’t terribly helpful.”
NHS Grampian was served this summer with a series of improvement notices after a highly-critical inspection by the Health and Safety Executive.
“They clearly found some significant issues,” Mr Barker said.
“But some of the knock-on effects are disproportionate and not all of them are very sensible.”
Cleaners in particular endured “a very hard time” over it, he said.
He added: “I feel for them. The HSE have to do their job but have to do it in a way that is understanding.
“I am not against making anything safer and we need to support the efforts. But we cannot be unthinking about the way we adopt this stuff.
“The mindless introduction of everything is not helping. We’ve got to be prepared to challenge some of these people if they are not coming up with sensible solutions.”
