The chair of the BMA council, Mark Porter, told a conference on whistleblowing on 3 October that some of the risks faced by patients in hospitals were caused by the working environment and culture within the NHS rather than the fact that providing healthcare is itself 'inherently risky'.
He said that there would continue to be poor care and avoidable patient-safety incidents "...as long as the culture of quality and safety is not fully embedded into our service from the top to the bottom and, as importantly, back again from the bottom to the top.
"We are engaged in a business that needs urgently to reform itself and to move from the victimisation of those with a conscience, to their celebration."
Protecting Whistleblowers: Working Together to Create a Safe Culture for Patients and Doctors was jointly hosted by the BMA and campaign group Patients First, whose founder, consultant paediatrician Kim Holt, was also on the platform. She set up the group following her own experiences as a whistleblower.
Dr Holt said she was "proud to be a whistleblower", but her situation was unusual because, thanks to BMA support, she had been reinstated in her job.
"The fact that I am seen as something special, that I held on to my job having told the truth, says all we need to know about the current culture in the health service," she said.
The conference was held to raise awareness and generate new ideas to improve upon the way concerns about NHS care can be divulged. The BMA plans to publish updated guidance shortly.
Former BMA president David Haslam, a Care Quality Commission national professional adviser, said the NHS should aim for a situation where whistleblowing was unnecessary because quality, care and listening were inbuilt.
He added: "Until then, we have to find ways of supporting people who wish to raise concerns, and deal with the concerns appropriately."
Julie Bailey, founder of Cure the NHS, echoed Professor Haslam's views. She said: "We want openness and transparency — then we wouldn't need whistleblowers."
Ms Bailey set up the pressure group to campaign for a public inquiry into failings at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. The final inquiry report is due to be published early next year.
She told the audience of doctors, stakeholders and managers: "We shouldn't be here today discussing how to protect whistleblowers. We should be here today discussing instead a whole culture change where zero harm and 'right first time' are implemented into the NHS. We should make it the norm to report poor practice or poor care and it is only you that can do it — you are the ones who have got to be brave and not tolerate anything less."