Review of all children’s intensive care units
The NHS is to review every children’s intensive care unit in the country amid concern that services are struggling to cope. An investigation into a string of deaths at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children warns “heavy strains” are being placed on families because England’s 27 units are overstretched. The Bristol inquiry was ordered by Prof Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS medical director, in response to a Telegraph investigation.
THE NHS is to review every children’s intensive care unit in the country amid concern that services are struggling to cope.
An investigation into a string of deaths at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children warns of risks that “heavy strains” are being placed on families as England’s 27 units are overstretched.
The Bristol inquiry was ordered by Prof Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS medical director, in response to a Telegraph investigation that exposed accounts of families left “screaming for help” for children who were recovering from heart surgery.
The report, published today, says parents were repeatedly “let down” by the care provided at the University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust over a four-year period. It identifies shortages of nurses and cardiologists and repeated cancellations of major surgery and says the hospital’s intensive care unit regularly worked far beyond its recommended limits.
The review concludes there is no evidence that death rates at the unit were any worse than those at other paediatric heart units. But its authors say it is impossible to tell whether babies and children treated at the unit had suffered higher levels of complications – such as brain damage – than those treated elsewhere, as such data is not collected. Next week NHS England will order an overhaul of the country’s cardiac units, which could see some specialist care centralised. It will begin a review of paediatric intensive care units later this year.
It follows 32 recommendations issued by the Bristol review, which says that “limitations on capacity” found in the West Country are likely to be a national issue.
But last night parents whose children died or suffered harm at the children’s hospital claimed the report amounted to a “whitewash”. They claimed the investigation had failed to properly look into a series of failings.
The two-year inquiry examined the care of 27 children, including 11 who died, between 2010 and 2014 at the Bristol hospital. Around 10 families are believed to be taking legal action against the trust, including seven whose children died following treatment on Ward 32 – the principal focus of the review. The ward was used for children in need of high dependency care, but parents said it was inadequately staffed.
Robert Woolley, chief executive of the trust, said: “We fully accept the findings of these reports and welcome their publication as a way to learn from mistakes. We are deeply sorry for the things we got wrong – for when our care fell below acceptable standards, for not supporting some families as well as we could have and for not always learning adequately from our mistakes.”