Hospital admits negligence over failings leading to baby’s sepsis death

A hospital has admitted clinical negligence over maternity care failings that led to the potentially avoidable death of a 10-day-old baby, The Independent has learned.

Kingsley Olasupo and his twin sister Princess were born on 8 April 2019 at Royal Bolton Hospital. Kingsley died 10 days later following a catalogue of mistakes, which included failing to screen him for sepsis.

Kingsley and his sister were born premature at 35 weeks. Three days later he was admitted to the special care unit due to a low temperature and “poor” feeding.

Despite being reviewed by two doctors he was not screened for an infection and not given antibiotics.

His condition deteriorated and on 12 April he was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis and sepsis. Days later scans revealed he had severe brain damage and would not survive.

Kingsley’s family said they had been “torn apart” by their son’s death and had pursued the trust to ensure a full independent investigation was carried out and lessons learnt.

BFT launched an investigation into Kingsley’s care after Mr Olasupo and Ms Daley raised concerns over their son’s death.

According to the trust’s investigation report, seen by The Independent, failings in care included that Kingsley was not screened for sepsis despite several “red flags”. Had this been done he would have been given antibiotics.

When midwives first escalated concerns to the neonatal team no physical medical review of Kingsley took place.

The investigation also found neonatal staff did not carry out daily reviews, and reviews that were done were incomplete and contained “inaccurate” and “misleading” information.

Other failings included:

• “Ineffective” assessment of Kingsley’s wellbeing on the postnatal ward
• Poor communication between staff and poor handover processes
• No consideration was given to the fact Kingsley was not feeding well
• Inadequate recording of observations.

Read full story

Source: The Independent, 20 April 2022