Malice in the Hospital
Health care staff are subject to numerous forms of informal assessment and comment on their performance and conduct quite apart from the occasions on which formal references for purposes of employment are written upon them.
The individuals concerned occasionally seek the advice of their professional bodies, trades unions and defence societies but matters are not taken any farther normally. It must be rare for a healthcare worker to bring an action in libel on these occasions but that is what happened in Akinleye v East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust (2008) EWHC 68, [2008] All ER (D) 180 (Jan).
Mr Akinleye, although he was medically qualified, worked as a technician carrying out support functions in the cardiology department of a hospital. He worked through an agency which supplied him to various hospitals where these functions needed to be performed. It seems one hospital where he worked contacted another to enquire about his work and conduct.
A manager in a cardiology department noted, by way of an e-mail, that Akinleye’s work was adequate (but not exceptional or
