SAFE and compassionate care, based on openness, honesty and a willingness to listen to the views of patients and staff are the key messages of the Welsh Government’s response to the Stafford Hospital scandal.

AMs will this afternoon debate the contents of that response called Delivering Safe Care, Compassionate Care, which seeks to put a Welsh slant on the findings of the public inquiry into the failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

A report of that inquiry, chaired by Robert Francis, was issued last February and laid bare the lack of care, compassion and competence which led to the unnecessary suffering of thousands of patients and higher than expected hospital death rates.

The 290 recommendations of the Francis Report were based in large part on reestablishing some core NHS principles, and the Welsh Government’s response emphasises those.

Ensuring patients are at the centre of all that the NHS in Wales does, and as equal partners, is a key message, and one focus will be on the NHS in Wales being a ‘listening organisation’ – listening to patients and staff then acting on what they have to say.

“The relationship between patients and clinicians is absolutely at the heart of everything we focus on,” said Wales’ chief medical officer Dr Ruth Hussey.

“We are trying to build a culture of organisations listening to each other and their patients.”

A new policy on whistleblowing is set to be announced before the end of this month as part of strengthened arrangements to encourage staff to raise concerns. But the report stresses that whistleblowing must be the last resort.

Another major development will be the compilation by health boards of Annual Quality Statements, setting out what they doing as organisation to improve care and patients’ experiences, and how they are working.

In Gwent, Aneurin Bevan Health Board has already produced its own 32-page response to the Francis Report, which has fed into the Welsh Government report.

Tightening up codes governing staff behaviour, care quality standards, risk monitoring, complaints, communication with patients and relatives, training, staffing and the monitoring of death rates are among the issues covered in its recommendations.