WE HAD TO WATCH OUR LITTLE GIRL DIE

PARENTS’ AGONY AFTER DEATH OF EVIE, THREE, FOLLOWING HOSPITAL BLUNDERS

WHEN Emma and Chris Porter took their three-year-old daughter Evelyn to A&E with what they thought was a bad stomach bug, they never expected to go home without her.

Hours later, they found themselves living every parent’s worst nightmare.

Their little girl was gone.

“We watched our child die,” Emma said.

“I watched her take her last breath. “We went in with her vomiting. We live in the 21st century.

“How can that have happened?” The devastated parents say they’ve been left with a ‘massive, unfillable void’ in their lives.

Their daughter’s bedroom remains exactly as she left it.

They spoke to the M.E.N following an inquest into their daughter’s death this week.

A coroner said there had been a ‘gross failure of medical attention’ and that there was a ‘direct and causal link between the gross failures and Evelyn’s death.’

He said there had been a string of ‘rudimentary’ errors.

‘Neglect,’ the coroner said, contributed to Evelyn’s tragic passing.

A doctor told the hearing that if Evelyn’s care had been better, it is likely she would have survived.

Emma and Chris lost their only child, known as Evie, at Wythenshawe Hospital in 2018.

The couple, from Timperley, Trafford, took her to A&E at around 10am on July 4 following a spell of persistent vomiting.

Evie, who had Down’s syndrome, died just five-and-a half hours later.

“She was a perfectly fit and healthy three-year-old with no problems,” Emma said.

“We have pictures of her from four days before she died.

“If you looked at them, you’d think ‘how an earth did we end up with the outcome that we did?.’”

Medics tried unsuccessfully five times to give Evie intravenous fluids, but it wasn’t until four hours later that fluids were actually administered, the inquest heard.

The court was told nurses tried and failed to take her blood pressure on a number of occasions. The failure was put down to a machine malfunction, but a different machine wasn’t sought.

Blood tests, which showed she was dehydrated, were not ‘acted upon appropriately,’ a subsequent hospital investigation found, the coroner heard.

An early warning scoring system – which determines the severity of a child’s condition and the scale of the response – wasn’t calculated properly, meaning senior consultants weren’t involved soon enough and observations weren’t carried out with the necessary frequency, the court was told.

And when Evelyn was transferred from A&E to a ward, a proper patient handover wasn’t carried out, meaning doctors were unaware of what steps and treatment had already been performed, the coroner was told.

Parents Chris and Emma told the M.E.N. they are still traumatised, having watched their little girl die.

Chris, 45, said: “There’s been one narrative that’s run throughout this whole horrible experience. We felt Evie didn’t receive the care she deserved or that she had a right to.

“We shouldn’t have left without her that day.

“As you can see from the coroner’s ruling, timing was of the essence. They just didn’t treat her in the fashion that they should have done.”

Emma and Chris say their concerns were dismissed and that there were ‘huge periods of time’ where nobody checked on their child.

Chris and Emma say they feel they were never properly listened to.

“We are not neurotic parents,” Chris added.

“There are so many ‘what ifs?’ for us. We went to the hospital on the basis of them being professionals who would fix our daughter.

“We didn’t go into A&E with any other belief other than it was a gastro bug-type illness.”

Emma, 45, added: “We flagged a number of things with a doctor on the day and they just didn’t listen to us. That’s probably one of things that upsets me the most.

“If you’re a doctor reading this, please always listen to the parents. They know their child better than anybody. When you say something isn’t normal, they should listen.

“The trauma of losing Evie in the way we did has had a huge impact”

The inquest - overseen by coroner Zak Golombeck at Manchester Coroners’ Court - heard a post-mortem found the cause of Evie’s death was ‘circulatory collapse associated with the consequences of persistent vomiting,’ with ‘intestinal obstruction by foreign material’ given as a contributing factor.

Chris and Emma say they were told it is believed the obstruction may have been caused by something Evie had ingested, but that tests were not conclusive.

They say they were told that even if the obstruction had been identified at the time, the course of treatment would have been the same.

The couple claim not to have been made aware that Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Wythenshawe Hospital, had carried out an investigation until almost a year after Evie’s death.

Bosses have now admitted there were ‘communication issues.’

Emma says she received a call ‘out of the blue’ while at work and was informed an investigation had been completed – and that bosses had found failings in Evie’s care.

“You can’t just ring someone up who has lost a child and tell them something like that with no warning,” she said.

The inquest hearing loomed over the couple for almost three years. “This whole thing has been painful,” Chris added. “We are left with a massive, unfillable void in our lives. Her bedroom is the same, we have got all her clothes hanging up, her coats in the hallway. We didn’t want to get rid of any of those things.

“There are constant reminders that she made our lives better. We miss her beyond words.

Chris said he hopes no other family has to deal with similar trauma.

Evie didn’t receive the care she deserved ... we shouldn’t have left without her that day.

Dad Chris Porter