The compensation "I'm gonna cover my arrse" attitude pervades every level of the NHS. We're constantly fighting a battle against it as well.
Example:
Mrs A is a 90yo woman who has had a simple fall with no injuries. She's unable to get herself back up so presses her lifeline pendant. Ambulance crew comes out, checks her over and finds no sign of injury. Crew then carries out basic obs and notices that she has a slight arrythmia in her heart. She is fine in herself and at her age it,s to be expected, although she was unaware of the problem.
It's Friday night and A&E is going to be full of p1ss heads and junkies, so obviously the crew want to avoid taking the lady in if possible. The best option would be an Out Of Hours GP visit to make sure all is good, or a visit by her own GP the following morning (if possible). So crew goes through the process of treating on scene.
The initial call is too Ambulance Control to speak to the On-duty nurses for authorisation to leave her at home. Nurses respond with "speak to OOH GP". Phone OOH GP, who responds with "I'm not happy to authorise that. Take her in to A&E"
Crew then has to explain to dear old Mavis why, although she's fine and nothing is wrong with her, they are going to have to take her from her nice warm home out to the truck, down to A&E, where she could be sat for a few hours in a waiting room full of vomitting morons and tw@ts trying to punch security guards. You then have to explain that this is all because, although we're happy to leave her at home after having met her, examined her, gone through her history, spoken to her carers/NoK; a nurse who wasn't on scene wasn't happy to trust our judgement and covered her arrse decided to give it to a doctor, who wasn't on scene and decided that he wanted his arrse covered.
The little old lady in this case ended up in hospital, and we made sure she got somewhere away from th