Easy to pin all the blame on doctors

THE story of little Reuben Harvey-Smith who lost both legs and seven fingers in amputations that resulted solely from the negligence of staff at Ipswich Hospital’s A&E department, is heart-rending.

Top doctors at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, who had treated the small boy for burns, said it could well be toxic shock and suggested the mother ask the staff at Ipswich to phone them. They didn’t despite being asked several times and dismissed the case as tonsillitis.

The hospital has accepted responsibility and the staff who brushed off the mother’s concerns will know for the rest of their lives that there is a human being minus legs and fingers because of their actions. Yet I doubt if they are the only culprits in this terrible story and I doubt if the others are even aware of the part they played.

The average A&E unit is full of drunks and drug addicts, those who quite regularly bring themselves to the brink of suicide and then call for help before the pills can take effect and people who think a small injury is life-threatening. Inevitably mistakes are made: people are thought drunk who are not or somebody who poses a real suicide threat is pumped out and sent home.

If the staff at Ipswich had time on their hands they might well have phoned Chelsea and Westminster but instead they were probably too harassed and busy.

Those who were in A&E on that occasion because of excessive habits or for trivial purposes contributed to a child’s lifelong disability but unlike the pilloried staff they will never know it.

Naughty teen is not really so bad

I LAUGHED when I read the charge sheet against teenager Nicola Jackson, whose mother listed all the things she had done wrong that week.

What, only one cup left in her room for three days? Only two bowls left around the house? Not heaps of decaying food congealed on dishes in a room covered with clothes and CDs? No kitchen full of pots and pans from cooking experiments which strangely never seem to include clearing up?

No loud music annoying the neighbours? No disputes over curfews?

Making more fuss of the dog than her parents? Well dogs don’t nag…

The lass sounds a paragon of virtue to me and many parents would cheerfully do a swap for the school holidays if that was all they had to put up with.