Mum’s fury after sepsis death doctor is allowed to work again
THE mother of a six-year-old boy killed by a doctor’s failure to spot sepsis last night criticised the ‘disgraceful’ decision to let her treat patients again.
Jack Adcock died following a ‘catalogue’ of errors by Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba, who was yesterday told she could return to medicine after appealing against her ban.
Doctors had rallied around the paediatric specialist, claiming she had been scapegoated for systematic failings of the stretched NHS.
The doctor – who in 2015 was convicted of gross negligence manslaughter – yesterday said she was ‘pleased with the outcome’, and wanted to ‘pay tribute and remember Jack Adcock, a wonderful little boy’.
But Jack’s mother Nicola spoke of her ‘disgust and devastation’ at the Court of Appeal’s decision to overturn the ban. She said: ‘What she did that day I will never ever, ever forgive her for and I don’t know how she can go back into this profession. I don’t know how she can live with herself.’
Vowing to take the case to the Supreme Court, she continued: ‘It’s an absolute disgrace. It makes a mockery of the justice system.
‘The only thing I can say is that if she had done what she should have done that day my son would still be here today, 99.9 per cent. I will never budge from that.’ The Court of Appeal ruled that the decision to remove Dr Bawa- Garba, 41, from the medical register had been disproportionate and that an earlier sanction of a 12-month suspension was sufficient punishment.
Mrs Adcock, 44, of Glen Parva, Leicester, added: ‘ Her face is known nationally and internationally now. If someone gives her a job in medicine, how are parents supposed to react if they bring their children to her for treatment?
‘This court ruling has opened a can of worms and other struck-off doctors will appeal.
‘We haven’t had time to grieve properly for Jack yet. All we have been doing for the past seven years is fighting and fighting for him and there is still no end in sight.’
Jack, who had Down’s syndrome and a heart condition, was admitted to the Leicester Royal Infirmary on February 18, 2011 with breathing difficulties and vomiting.
He died 11 hours later from a cardiac arrest caused by sepsis, which had been triggered by pneumonia.
Sepsis develops when an infection such as blood poisoning sparks a violent immune response in which the body attacks its own organs. But the condition is notoriously difficult to diagnose until it has spread throughout the body. Dr Bawa-Garba, the most senior doctor on the shift, had just returned from 13 months of maternity. She initially diagnosed him with gastroenteritis, a stomach bug, when in fact he had sepsis.
She later failed to act on blood tests that showed he had a kidney infection and failed to tell staff not to prescribe a medication that made the condition worse.
At one point she tried to stop other staff from resuscitating him after his heart had stopped because she mistakenly thought he was under a ‘do not resuscitate order’.
But, on that shift, she was performing the roles of three doctors and overseeing six wards because the hospital was so short staffed.
A computer failure in the hospital also meant she was told the blood test results over the phone rather than seeing them on the screen, making them far more difficult to read. Consultant Dr Stephen O’Riordan also overlooked the abnormal blood test results and chose not to have another look at Jack. In 2015, Dr Bawa- Garba was convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence at Nottingham Crown Court and given a two-year jail term, suspended for two years.
At the time, the judge said neither she nor a nurse who was on duty ‘gave Jack the priority which this very sick boy deserved’. She was initially handed a 12-month suspension from practising by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, an independent panel. But in an unprecedented move, the GMC went to the High Court where this ruling was overturned and Dr Bawa-Garba was struck off on January 25.
The decision prompted outrage among medics, who argued that she had been made a scapegoat for wider failings at the hospital. They subsequently raised more than £300,000 to fund her appeal. Then health secretary Jeremy Hunt had also spoken out against the decision to have Dr Bawa-Garba struck off, saying it would harm efforts to end the ‘ blame culture’ at the heart of the NHS.
Mr Hunt wanted to encourage an ‘open and transparent’ culture in hospitals by ending the fear of litigation among doctors and nurses.
He said this would encourage them to put their hands up when they had done something wrong - instead of fearing prosecution.
Yesterday, in a landmark ruling, three judges at the Court of Appeal quashed the ban and restored a lesser sanction of a one- year suspension.
The GMC said it would not appeal against the decision. Dr Bawa- Garba has already served the ban so could be back at work within weeks, although it is not yet clear when she will return.
She told the BBC’s Panorama programme: ‘The lessons that I’ve learnt will live with me for ever. I welcome the verdict because for me that’s an opportunity to do something that I’ve dedicated my life to doing, which is medicine.
‘But I wanted to pay tribute and remember Jack Adcock, a wonderful little boy that started this story. My hope is that lessons learnt from this case will translate into better working conditions for junior doctors, better recognition of sepsis, factors in place that will improve patient safety.’
The Court of Appeal heard Dr Bawa-Garba was an above average doctor with a first- class degree from the University of Southampton. It agreed that a number of people bore responsibility for the tragedy and noted ‘the systematic failings of the hospital’.
Giving the court’s ruling, the Master of the Rolls, Sir Terence Etherton, said: ‘ Undoubtedly, there are some cases where the facts are such that the most severe sanction, erasure from the medical register, is the only proper sanction. This is not one of them.’
He added that, aside from Jack’s death, no concerns have ever been raised about the clinical competence of Dr Bawa-Garba, who continued to be employed at the hospital until her conviction.
‘The tribunal was satisfied that her deficient actions in relation to Jack were neither deliberate nor reckless, that she had remedied the deficiencies in her clinical skills and did not present a continuing risk to patients, and that the risk of her clinical practice suddenly and without explanation falling below the standards expected on any given day was no higher than for any other reasonably competent doctor.
‘The tribunal was an expert body entitled to reach all those conclusions, including the important factor weighing in favour of Dr BawaGarba that she is a competent and useful doctor, who presents no material continuing danger to the public, and can provide considerable useful future service to society.’
‘I will never, ever forgive her’
‘Lessons will live with me for ever’