Prosecuting optometrist who missed boy’s fatal condition ‘will drive up waiting times’
THE manslaughter prosecution of an optometrist who failed to spot a schoolboy’s fatal condition will cause a culture of fear which will drive up NHS waiting times, a court was told.
Honey Rose, 35, did not notice that eight-year-old Vincent Barker had swollen optic discs – a symptom of fluid on the brain – when she examined him at a branch of Boots in Ipswich. He died five months later.
Yesterday Rose was given a two-year suspended prison term at Ipswich Crown Court and ordered to carry out 200 hours of community service.
But her barrister, Ian Stern QC, warned that the outcome of the case would cause optometrists to act “in a more defensive way”. Speaking of the consequences of the prosecution, he said: “Health professionals practise more defensive medicine.
“Hospital waiting gets longer, patients that don’t have anything much wrong with them are seen by doctors which takes up valuable NHS resources and time, and the consequence is people who are genuinely ill have to wait longer.” The landmark case is the first conviction of an optometrist for gross negligence manslaughter. Such cases generally involve multiple lapses over a period of time and involve obvious symptoms that would prompt a health practitioner to make a referral.
But Judge Jeremy Stuart-Smith, said although it had been a “single lapse”, the breach of duty was so serious that it was criminal.
He told Rose: “You simply departed from your normal practice in a way that was completely untypical for you, a one-off, for no good reason.”
Rose who has three children aged eight months, five and 10, has not worked since March 2013 and is facing a fitness to practice hearing before the General Optical Council. She plans to appeal against the criminal conviction.