Thankyou for the opportunity to review this paper which addresses a very important topic. In general the paper is well constructed and well written, although there are many proofing errors that require attention. I would like you to address the following comments:
1. you state that the study had ethical approval from the university. I am wondering, given that you were recruiting NHS nurses, how you addressed NHS ethics requirements.
2. Page 9 please sense check this statement at the bottom of the page, I suspect it should read that the assessment of risk outweighed the potential for change leading to quiescent silence : For Tilly, the professional risk and her continued employment within the NHS did not outweigh the risks associated with speaking up despite her desire for change, demonstrating quiescent silence because of the fear of consequences...
3. Sandra's quote page 10 needs a bit further interpretation to help the reader understand where she is referring to the consequences of speaking up as it is kind of hidden in the vagueness of her references to it in the first few lines - for international audience without the understanding of the nuance of the language it would be very hard to get the interpreted meaning from this.
4. In your methods it would be good to identify how you have managed anonymity and identify whether the participants are provided with pseudonyms. How did you decide on the time intervals between interviews? The data analysis does not offer the opportunity to understand the impact of time on the experience of the participants as would be expected in a longitudinal study. Perhaps you can offer some reflections on the 'personal trajectories' which was the rationale provided for taking a longitudinal approach and you need to find a way to bring the longitudinal into the presentation of the findings.
5. The discussion is well constructed and develops the thinking around the findings in light of current literature. What is striking is the issue that nurses generally speak up on the issues of working conditions where there can be a sense of collective voice, and therefore some safety, vs speaking up on patient safety issues where this becomes a task the individual must carry. It feels like this would benefit from some further thinking through to consider why this might be the case in light of theoretical ideas around power, professions and organisation, but also perhaps to raise this as something that we need to do further research into and understand due to the implications for patients eg in terms of thinking through some of what came out in the Francis and other reports where staff are unable to/don't raise concern about poor clinical practice.