THERE can be few things more terrifying to a parent than the thought their child might not get the care due to them when they need it the most.

Yet the nightmarish situation that befell four-year-old Oliver Blockley in October 2011 saw him admitted to Stoke Mandeville Hospital with a virus and then – through what is now accepted to be a series of failings – suffer a heart attack and die the following day.

The BFP actually covered the inquest into Oliver’s death in 2012, when Buckinghamshire coroner Richard Hulett found, from the evidence available, that there was no suggestion the hospital could have done more to avert Oliver’s death.

If it was a terrible thing to happen in the first place, it is downright chilling that to consider this conclusion was reached because staff and representatives of Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, which operates the hospital, presented the information with what has now been called a “lack of openness”.

To operate effectively, our health services need the trust of the people using them. With service pathways becoming more complicated, and frontline diagnoses now often done over the phone through the likes of NHS 111, this is more important than ever.

After all, how can patients change the way they seek treatment – as they are now asked to – if they do not have faith in every level of their health service, and that each will serve us in the best way possible?

We all have ‘bad days at the office’ of course. For most of us that might mean an embarrassing mistake or, at worst, a costly hiccup, but the stakes are far higher for those in the medical profession.

That is not to excuse anything, of course – but it is the very reason why transparency and accountability is so very important in our health services.

Mistakes will inevitable be made from time to time and it is vitally important they are learned from, and that the public see changes being made accordingly. And downplaying the seriousness of situations like this is almost always a bad idea and a ‘false economy’ in terms of public relations.

There may be a brutal outcry in the short-term, but at least these matters will be seen to have been dealt with openly and in a timely way.

The notion that what should be our most trusted institutions – whether health or any other key public service – are not giving us all the facts when we most need them is an insidious one and far more damaging to their reputations in the long term.

Thankfully one of the points highlighted about our health trust in last year’s Keogh Review is the fact that it needed to be more open and communicative.

And, thankfully, this is a point the trust has assured the world it has taken on board and has already been acting upon.

Certainly, the unreserved apology made to Ollie’s mother by the trust’s chief executive Anne Eden leaves no doubt as to how seriously the matter has been taken.

And, as Ms Eden says, we can only hope that all the changes made as a result of this case will ensure no other family has to go through the awful ordeal suffered by the Blockleys and poor young Oliver.