The NHS - The Story So Far by Ellen Welch

Author:Ellen Welch [Welch, Ellen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: NHS, United Kingdom, Welfare State, Healthcare, History, Medicine
ISBN: 9781399000819
Google: AoLAzQEACAAJ
Amazon: B08SRBBJCR
Goodreads: 55180834
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
Published: 2020-10-14T23:00:00+00:00

2018 Hadiza Bawa-Garba is struck off the GMC’s medical register in January 2018 after being found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of gross negligence in 2015. In 2011, 6-year-old Jack Adcock was admitted to the Children’s Assessment Unit at the Leicester Royal Infirmary with diarrhoea, vomiting and difficulty in breathing. He had an underlying heart condition and Down’s Syndrome, which made the sepsis he was suffering with difficult to detect. A series of significant errors were identified in his care and he died later that evening after going into cardiac arrest. Paediatric trainee Dr Bawa-Garba was the ST4 Specialist Registrar who treated him that day. She was alone, covering the Emergency Department and the Children’s Assessment Unit, with no senior consultant available on site. Rota gaps meant she was covering the work of two other doctors as well as her own, assessing multiple sick patients and, if this wasn’t stressful enough, an IT failure in the hospital delayed any test results being available. She had also just recently returned from maternity leave. She was criticised for not specifically asking her consultant to review Jack – although she did share his clearly abnormal blood results with him during the evening handover meeting, and the consultant did not review on his own initiative. She was also criticised for not making it clear to Jack’s Mum that he should not receive his regular blood pressure mediation while he was unwell, and she deliberately did not prescribe this on Jack’s drug chart. Tragically, Jack was given this medication, which, combined with the sepsis, led to circulatory shock and cardiac arrest. The case has raised debate about how medical errors are dealt with – particularly in this case, where system failures and the pressures of under-staffing all contributed to the death of a little boy. But other individual members of staff were singled out (Nurse Isabel Amaro was also struck off the Nursing Register for her involvement). Medics across the country spoke out at the verdict of this case, not to minimise or excuse the potentially avoidable death of a child – but recognising that the appalling working conditions Bawa-Garba was battling through that day allowed the negligence to happen. We all recognised, with fear and vulnerability that the same conditions are occurring across the NHS every day, and that any doctor could be in the same position. The GMC’s management of the case is highly criticised. They appealed to the High Court when its own regulators (the MPTS) gave her what it considered too lenient a punishment (one year suspension). This led to her erasure from the medical register, a decision that has subsequently been reversed. The GMC made no attempt to investigate the chaos at the Leicester Royal Infirmary that day, or her ‘supervising’ consultant, who contributed to the poor care delivered to Jack Adcock.

Whistleblowing The case of Dr Chris Day is highlighted in view of the Bawa-Garba ruling. Junior doctor Chris Day raised concerns about under staffing in an Intensive Care Unit in London in 2013.

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