Doctors slammed over patient’s morphine death
‘GROSS FAILINGS’ IN CASE WHERE MEDICS WERE ‘OUT OF THEIR DEPTH,’ SAYS CORONER
TWO doctors have been slammed by a coroner for ‘gross failings’ in the care of a patient who died following an accidental overdose of morphine after becoming addicted to the drug.
Dr Chayan Datta and Dr Guruprasad Ganguly will be reported to the General Medical Council by senior coroner for north Manchester Simon Nelson over serious concerns about their dealings with Nicholas Wilkinson.
The pair, who were working at The Village Medical Centre in Littleborough at the time, were said to have been ‘out of their depth’ when dealing with the father-of-one and didn’t realise the extent of his dependency on morphine, which he took to deal with pain brought on by rheumatoid arthritis.
An inquest into Mr Wilkinson’s death heard that a consultant at Pennine Acute Trust’s pain management service at Rochdale Infirmary recommended a morphine dosage to GPs.
It was advised Mr Wilkinson should have been steadily weaned off the drug after he was prescribed it in early 2014.
Mr Wilkinson, from Littleborough, was initially treated according to the advice, but his morphine dosage was later increased to the maximum recommended for a non-terminal patient.
A medication plan, which broadly chimed with the Pennine Acute consultant’s advice, was put in place by another doctor, but it was not followed by Dr Ganguly or Dr Datta.
Mr Wilkinson was subsequently hospitalised three times after accidentally overdosing on morphine, including on Christmas Day in 2015. Each time, staff at Fairfield General Hospital weaned him off the drug. But when he returned to The Village Medical Centre, he was put back on morphine – and the dosage was doubled after an initial prescription.
Dr Ganguly admitted that was a ‘backwards step.’ Mr Wilkinson was on the high dosage of morphine for more than a year. Dr Ganguly said his reason for putting Mr Wilkinson back on the drug following overdoses was that he was ‘always in pain.’
Mr Wilkinson, a former transport manager, died aged 47 following a fourth overdose, which caused significant kidney damage, in June 2015.
Toxicological analysis could not determine whether he suffered the overdose after accidentally taking too much of the drug at once or because it had accumulated in his system.
Dr Ganguly, who has since left the practice, and Dr Datta, who has retired, were said to have failed to follow an effective treatment strategy.
Coroner Mr Nelson, said there were ‘gross failings’ in Mr Wilkinson’s care, and added: “I believe the doctors were simply out of their depth - they admitted that.”