Struck-off Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba wins appeal to work again

[dowie]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-45169589

A doctor who was struck off over the death of a six-year-old boy has won her appeal to practise medicine again.

Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba was convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence in 2015 over the death of Jack Adcock, who died of sepsis at Leicester Royal Infirmary in 2011.

She was struck off in January 2018.

Speaking after the appeal, the doctor said she was "pleased with the outcome" but wanted to "pay tribute and remember Jack Adcock, a wonderful little boy".

Jack's mother, Nicola Adcock, said she was "disgusted" and "devastated" by the judgement and that it made a "mockery of the justice system".

Anyone else think this is a bit messed up? Obviously there were mistakes made but it doesn't seem to have really been her fault here, if anything the thing that sadly finished off the kid was his mother prescribing his usual medication which this Doctor had taken him off (due to concerns about blood pressure). It seems a bit dubious that she was convicted of manslaughter (by a jury of plebs) but actually medical experts believe she is fit to practice and it wasn't necessarily her fault that the poor kid died.

Something a bit unsettling about this, obviously if some medic deliberately murders someone in hospital then of course there is still a place for the police/courts etc.. but for questions surrounding mistakes etc.. surely they're better handled by the medical professionals?

 

[ubersonic]

IMO a doctor (especially a trainee) who loses a patient because they were set up to fail either by mismanagement, government underfunding or in this case both should never be punished.

If you put a work experience student in charge of a nuclear plant, cut the budget to less than it needs to function then lay off half the maintenance staff, then something bad will happen and holding the student responsible for the result is as stupid in that analogy as it was in this case.

 

[dowie]

Well she's not exactly a trainee, she's a registrar and was supervising doctors junior to her but it seems clear there were plenty of other failings beyond her control - like IT systems being down, blood tests being given verbally over the phone without highlighting an abnormal result, inexperienced agency nurses not doing the observations expected, another nurse allowing the mother to give the kid a his usual medicine that the doctor had decided (with good reason it seems) to withhold. some rather unfortunate circumstances leading to her thinking he was a DNR patient later on too, albeit apparently that didn't really impact anything in the end.

 

[M1k3H]

I read up the article and agree with her being allowed to practice. It wasn't her fault explicitly; it was failures from supporting disciplines and systems that led to late and incorrect (with hindsight) decisions being taken.

 

[Minstadave]

I know her personally and worked with her more than once over the years. She made a bad mistake that day but is a sound and good quality doctor.

The whole case has taken the medical profession back decades in terms of blame culture and learning from mistakes.

 

[Roland Butter]

IMO a doctor (especially a trainee) who loses a patient because they were set up to fail either by mismanagement, government underfunding or in this case both should never be punished.

If you put a work experience student in charge of a nuclear plant, cut the budget to less than it needs to function then lay off half the maintenance staff, then something bad will happen and holding the student responsible for the result is as stupid in that analogy as it was in this case.

the analogy is spurious, she was a fully qualified health professional getting very well paid to be responsible for the running of a hospital department, not a trainee thrown in at the deep end.

She ****** up, buck stops with her, as it should, and people who are paid BIG money to be in charge and **** up need to be investigated.

I'm happy to acknowledge she has been cleared, but where incompetency is involved and lives in danger the law must be involved , the BMA investigating a BMA member for malpractice is as loopy as the Police investigating the Police for corruption.

 

[deuse]

the analogy is spurious, she was a fully qualified health professional getting very well paid to be responsible for the running of a hospital department, not a trainee thrown in at the deep end.

She ****** up, buck stops with her, as it should, and people who are paid BIG money to be in charge and **** up need to be investigated.

I'm happy to acknowledge she has been cleared, but where incompetency is involved and lives in danger the law must be involved , the BMA investigating a BMA member for malpractice is as loopy as the Police investigating the Police for corruption.

Agree.

It should be a judge and jury.

 

[Minstadave]

the analogy is spurious, she was a fully qualified health professional getting very well paid to be responsible for the running of a hospital department, not a trainee thrown in at the deep end.

She ****** up, buck stops with her, as it should, and people who are paid BIG money to be in charge and **** up need to be investigated.

I'm happy to acknowledge she has been cleared, but where incompetency is involved and lives in danger the law must be involved , the BMA investigating a BMA member for malpractice is as loopy as the Police investigating the Police for corruption.

There's many things wrong here.

Hadiza was a registrar, registrar level work is under consultant oversight. She is not in charge (and BIG money is probably stretching it). The consultant is in charge, the buck stops with the boss. Who in fact made identical clinical errors but faced no repercussions or investigation (and promptly moved out of the GMCs reach). This consultant saw the child's blood gas, wrote it down and didn't bother to do anything about it because they "weren't asked".

The BMA is our union, the GMC are the investigating body. They are the regulatory body for doctors for this purpose. Noting loopy about them doing the investigation, they aggressively pursued Hadiza even after their own independent committee found her to be a safe doctor, striking her off against the committees advice - because of "public interest". This is what got slapped down in court this week and rightly so.

Errors are investigated to the nth degree in the NHS. It's bloody exhausting how much effort is currently but into error/improvement and candour in the current NHS.

In this case there were numerous systemic failures at the LRI on top of the clinical errors Hadiza made. She did not kill Jack, sepsis did, compounded by poor clinical judgement and numerous systematic failings at LRI, including the mother giving a drug which is contraindicated in sepsis and was not prescribed. Where is the corporate manslaughter charge for LRI?

 

[Minstadave]

Agree.

It should be a judge and jury.

There is a fundamental problem with this. Criminal courts and lay juries are designed to investigate individual blame, they are not designed to understand systematic failures at an organisational level.

If doctors are tried in criminal courts for clinical mistakes then the outcome will be simply to go back to hushing up errors like 20-30 years ago, rather than being a grown up and learning from them so they can't happen again.

 

[ubersonic]

the analogy is spurious, she was a fully qualified health professional getting very well paid to be responsible for the running of a hospital department, not a trainee thrown in at the deep end.

She was/is a junior doctor who was covering the jobs of four people, she was placed in a position above her training where failure was guaranteed due to mismanagement/underfunding and *shock* failure occurred.

She ****** up, buck stops with her, as it should, and people who are paid BIG money to be in charge and **** up need to be investigated.

I, I think maybe you should read information on subject before participating in discussion threads about them in future. Junior doctors do not get "big money", and the buck should rightfully stop with the bean counters/administrators who set her up to fail in the first place.

It should be a judge and jury.

That was tried, the jury actually convicted her due to finding based on emotion rather than evidence (the historical flaw with jury trials). Thankfully the Judge based the sentence on the evidence and suspended it.

 

[lude1962]

The consultant saw the child's blood gas, wrote it down and didn't bother to do anything about it.

Are the NHS exempt from corporate manslaughter charges?
Meaning of “relevant duty of care”
a duty owed in connection with—

(i)the supply by the organisation of goods or services (whether for consideration or not),

Is/was there a cover up by blaming the 'junior?

 

[Minstadave]

Are the NHS exempt from corporate manslaughter charges?
Meaning of “relevant duty of care”
a duty owed in connection with—

(i)the supply by the organisation of goods or services (whether for consideration or not),

Is/was there a cover up by blaming the 'junior?

I don’t think the NHS is exempt but I’m not a lawyer.

https://www.bmj.com/content/332/7555/1404

The cover up angle? Personally I think there is an element of truth to that. The path of least resistance was to hang a junior doctor out to dry and it was gladly taken. Hariza was extremely naive in the aftermath and that was exploited.

 

[Uther]

Just over 20 years ago my wife was in hospital in London with a difficult pregnancy. The consultant was great, so we thought. Always on the ball, lots of continuous tests and care etc.
Then the August bank holiday came along, and he left things in charge of a young doctor, maybe a registrar, and at just that time my wife started having problems, the baby stopped moving, and the heartbeat slowed. The nurses were concerned, but the doctor refused to do anything until the consultant got back from his three days away. By then of course it was too late. I honestly think they all went into 'cover up' mode.
I could have killed that doctor, and was in fact physically restrained from throwing her off a fifth floor balcony. I was in a dark place for a few years and I still don't know what I would do if I saw either her, or the consultant again. Regardless of blame, whether right or wrong the mother will never forgive the doctor involved.
I would like to think procedures have changed, but this sort of tragic case doesn't make me too hopeful.

 

[stockhausen]

Almost (but not quite) as strange as Ben Stokes being found not guilty.

 

[kindai]

She was the scapegoat pure and simple.

I actually think, though we will never know for sure, if the IT system hadn't failed and the results were visible to her on screen that the kid wouldn't of died. Maybe they should go after the IT staff as well?

 

[StriderX]

Better get ready for more deaths as the Tories strip-mine the NHS of it's worth.

 

[Roland Butter]

Better get ready for more deaths as the Tories strip-mine the NHS of it's worth.

This is not a lie, their twisted lust will not be satisfied until the working class are eradicated.

 

[dowie]

I actually think, though we will never know for sure, if the IT system hadn't failed and the results were visible to her on screen that the kid wouldn't of died. Maybe they should go after the IT staff as well?

Reading some of the other accounts there was a staff member reporting the blood tests who was seemingly fed up at having to deal with repeated calls for results and didn't highlight a slight abnormal result to her, obviously she got all the various figures but off the top of head she didn't notice it was off, if she was seeing a report then it would have been highlighted for her as being abnormal.

 

[Minstadave]

Reading some of the other accounts there was a staff member reporting the blood tests who was seemingly fed up at having to deal with repeated calls for results and didn't highlight a slight abnormal result to her, obviously she got all the various figures but off the top of head she didn't notice it was off, if she was seeing a report then it would have been highlighted for her as being abnormal.

The IT issue was only a minor part of the errors that day. It really wasn’t here nor there.

There were far more important issues including Hadiza’s own mistakes, the consultant not seeing an obviously very sick child, a medication being given that wasn’t prescribed, a repeat blood gas never being done, substandard nursing care on the paediatric ward - all of which came together to contribute to Jack’s death.

 

[dowie]

I know it wasn't just an IT issue, I've mentioned some of those earlier in the thread, I was just replying to the post about the IT staff.