Gosport death scandal doctor says: I was only doing my best
THE doctor at the centre of the Gosport War Memorial Hospital scandal in which hundreds died claimed yesterday she had been “doing her best” for patients.
Jane Barton, who has remained silent since a damning report was published, emerged from hiding and said she was a “hard-working doctor” working in an “inadequately resourced” part of the NHS.
A report said 450 patients had their lives shortened after being prescribed powerful painkillers at the hospital between 1989 and 2000, an investigation revealed.
Dr Barton, 70, with her husband Tim beside her, appeared outside her home in Gosport, Hants, where a statement was read out.
“Jane would like to thank her family, friends, colleagues, former patients and many others for their continued support and loyalty through this protracted inquiry,” it stated. “She has always maintained that she was a hard-working doctor doing her best for her patients in a very inadequately resourced part of the health service.
Difficult
“We ask that our privacy is respected at this difficult time, she will be making no comment.”
But relatives of patients who died were unimpressed.
Ann Reeves, the daughter of Elsie Devine, who died at the hospital in 1999 aged 88, said that if Dr Barton was unhappy with hospital resources as she claimed then she should have left the job.
She said: “I’m sad to hear she was under-resourced, but I would say, ‘Get out or look after your patients properly.’ We actually want to hear if she can justify the amount of morphine prescribed to patients who weren’t in pain.”
Ms Reeves, 72, has spent 20 years at the forefront of the campaign to bring justice to families of victims.
More than 450 people had been prescribed the powerful painkillers at the hospital, while another 200 were “probably” similarly given opioids between 1989 and 2000 without medical justification, the Gosport Independent Panel said.
“There was a disregard for human life and a culture of shortening lives of a large number of patients at the hospital,” its report stated.
There was an “institutionalised regime of prescribing and administering dangerous doses of hazardous combination of medication not clinically indicated or justified”.
The inquiry drew parallels with the cases of killers GP Harold Shipman and nurse Beverley Allitt. In 2010, the General Medical Council ruled that Dr Barton, who has since retired, was guilty of multiple instances of professional misconduct relating to 12 patients who died at the hospital. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the police would examine new material found in the report.
Hampshire Constabulary said that any new inquiry would be investigated by another police force following criticism of its previous investigation. Gillian McKenzie, 84, was the first to go to police shortly after the death of her mother Gladys Richards, 91, in August 1998.
She brought evidence to former health minister Norman Lamb, who secured a public inquiry in 2014.
Mrs McKenzie said: “I kept a stiff upper lip for 20 years. It’s nice to know I wasn’t barmy. I wouldn’t say today is a victory, it’s not in the criminal court yet.
“While I’m alive I shall be fighting for that.”