Protect whistleblowing advice line

What Protect does

Protect has worked on whistleblowing for over 30 years and supports more than 3,000 people through the advice line each year. Advisers are legally qualified or experienced and work under the supervision of lawyers. Callers include people unsure who to tell about a concern and people facing retaliation after speaking up.

The charity also helped pave the way for the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, the main whistleblowing law in Great Britain. Northern Ireland has its own equivalent law, the Public Interest Disclosure (Northern Ireland) Order 1998.

Concerns healthcare staff bring to Protect

Say a pharmacy technician sees repeated dispensing errors hidden from incident reports. Or a nurse sees staffing levels fall below safe numbers night after night. Or a locum pharmacist is pressed to supply a GLP-1 medicine without a proper clinical check. In each case, an adviser helps you decide who to tell first, what to put in writing and how the law protects you.

A concern about patient safety, a breach of a legal obligation or a cover-up usually falls within whistleblowing law. A personal grievance about your own pay or treatment usually does not. Our guide to protected disclosures explains the difference.

What Protect does not do

• Protect has no power to investigate your concern.
• Advisers do not review documents for you.
• Protect does not give general employment law advice. For contract or pay questions, contact Acas or Citizens Advice.
• Protect does not represent callers at an employment tribunal, and advice is more limited once a claim reaches tribunal.
• Protect does not give counselling, but advisers can point you to support services.

How to prepare for your call

Calls waiting in the queue end after five minutes, so you can call back without holding for long. Before you call:

1. Write down the concern in two or three sentences: what is wrong and who is at risk.
2. List the dates of key events and anyone you have already told.
3. Note your employer, job role and employment status, such as employee, locum or bank worker.
4. Check any agreement you have signed about confidentiality. Our guide to NDAs and speaking up explains which clauses cannot stop a protected disclosure.
5. Keep copies of your own notes in a safe place. Our guide to safe records explains what to keep and what to leave alone.

Speaking-up channels inside healthcare

Protect often helps callers choose between internal and external channels. In England, NHS organisations have Freedom to Speak Up Guardians. See our Freedom to Speak Up profile. Regulators such as the GPhC, GMC, NMC and CQC accept concerns from staff. Wales and Scotland have their own NHS speaking-up arrangements, described on our Wales and Scotland pages. Our whistleblowing guide sets out the options step by step.

If speaking up is affecting your health

Raising a concern is stressful, and retaliation makes the strain worse. Read retaliation after speaking up and stress under an NDA. The support finder lists wellbeing services by profession. Samaritans answer on 116 123 at any hour.

Prepare for the conversation

• Whistleblowing in healthcare: your options
• Keeping appropriate records of workplace concerns
• Prepare for employment or whistleblowing advice