An Employment Tribunal has just awarded whistleblowing NHS consultant, Jasna Macanovic, a whopping £219,000 in compensation. At work, she expressed concerns about a procedure called “buttonholing”, which uses blunt needles to aid dialysis. Dialysis is a procedure to remove waste products and excess fluid from the blood when the kidneys stop working properly. It often involves diverting blood to a machine to be cleaned. Macanovic learnt that some patients had suffered complications as a result of the approach, and that other colleagues were also sceptical of the procedure. She made a series of complaints around this internally at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Portsmouth where she worked. When these failed, she filed a report with the Care Quality Commission. The hospital, together with the CQC, decided that it was a safe procedure. In response, she filed a subsequent report to the General Medical Council. Meanwhile, the hospital launched an investigation into Macanovic’s behaviour. At her Tribunal hearing, it told the Tribunal that Macanovic had become “unmanageable” and that relations at work had become “poisoned”. While the investigations were ongoing, Macanovic was excluded from some meetings. She was also told to avoid any discussion about buttonholing. In January 2018, she lodged a claim with the Employment Tribunal. The following month, a disciplinary procedure was instigated against her and she was dismissed just a few days later for “serious misconduct”. The Employment Tribunal allowed her to amend her claim to include claims relating to her dismissal. The Tribunal heard that someone, who was not a non-executive director of the hospital, had been appointed to support Macanovic as a whistleblowing complainant but they had made no contact with her. In March of last year, an Employment Tribunal found that Macanovic had made protected disclosures under the whistleblowing regime, which aroused strong feelings, and that this strengthened “the connection between the disclosure and the dismissal”. At a remedy hearing, Macanovic was awarded £186,697 in relation to her unfair dismissal, plus £33,000 for injury to feelings, following unlawful detriments she suffered for raising protected disclosures as a whistleblower.