Jump to content

Search the hub

Showing results for tags 'Baby'.

More search options

  • Search By Tags

    Start to type the tag you want to use, then select from the list.

  • Search By Author

Content Type


Forums

  • All
    • Commissioning, service provision and innovation in health and care
    • Coronavirus (COVID-19)
    • Culture
    • Improving patient safety
    • Investigations, risk management and legal issues
    • Leadership for patient safety
    • Organisations linked to patient safety (UK and beyond)
    • Patient engagement
    • Patient safety in health and care
    • Patient Safety Learning
    • Professionalising patient safety
    • Research, data and insight
    • Miscellaneous

Categories

  • Commissioning, service provision and innovation in health and care
    • Commissioning and funding patient safety
    • Digital health and care service provision
    • Health records and plans
    • Innovation programmes in health and care
    • Climate change/sustainability
  • Coronavirus (COVID-19)
    • Blogs
    • Data, research and statistics
    • Frontline insights during the pandemic
    • Good practice and useful resources
    • Guidance
    • Mental health
    • Exit strategies
    • Patient recovery
    • Questions around Government governance
  • Culture
    • Bullying and fear
    • Good practice
    • Occupational health and safety
    • Safety culture programmes
    • Second victim
    • Speak Up Guardians
    • Staff safety
    • Whistle blowing
  • Improving patient safety
    • Clinical governance and audits
    • Design for safety
    • Disasters averted/near misses
    • Equipment and facilities
    • Error traps
    • Health inequalities
    • Human factors (improving human performance in care delivery)
    • Improving systems of care
    • Implementation of improvements
    • International development and humanitarian
    • Safety stories
    • Stories from the front line
    • Workforce and resources
  • Investigations, risk management and legal issues
    • Investigations and complaints
    • Risk management and legal issues
  • Leadership for patient safety
    • Business case for patient safety
    • Boards
    • Clinical leadership
    • Exec teams
    • Inquiries
    • International reports
    • National/Governmental
    • Patient Safety Commissioner
    • Quality and safety reports
    • Techniques
    • Other
  • Organisations linked to patient safety (UK and beyond)
    • Government and ALB direction and guidance
    • International patient safety
    • Regulators and their regulations
  • Patient engagement
    • Consent and privacy
    • Harmed care patient pathways/post-incident pathways
    • How to engage for patient safety
    • Keeping patients safe
    • Patient-centred care
    • Patient Safety Partners
    • Patient stories
  • Patient safety in health and care
    • Care settings
    • Conditions
    • Diagnosis
    • High risk areas
    • Learning disabilities
    • Medication
    • Mental health
    • Men's health
    • Patient management
    • Social care
    • Transitions of care
    • Women's health
  • Patient Safety Learning
    • Patient Safety Learning campaigns
    • Patient Safety Learning documents
    • Patient Safety Standards
    • 2-minute Tuesdays
    • Patient Safety Learning Annual Conference 2019
    • Patient Safety Learning Annual Conference 2018
    • Patient Safety Learning Awards 2019
    • Patient Safety Learning Interviews
    • Patient Safety Learning webinars
  • Professionalising patient safety
    • Accreditation for patient safety
    • Competency framework
    • Medical students
    • Patient safety standards
    • Training & education
  • Research, data and insight
    • Data and insight
    • Research
  • Miscellaneous

News

  • News

Find results in...

Find results that contain...


Date Created

  • Start
    End

Last updated

  • Start
    End

Filter by number of...

Joined

  • Start

    End

Group

First name

Last name

Country

Join a private group (if appropriate)

About me

Organisation

Role

Found 549 results
  1. News Article
    A hospital that was at the centre of a major inquiry into unsafe maternity care five years ago is facing new questions over its safety after bosses admitted a baby boy would have survived if not for mistakes by hospital staff. Jenny Feasey, from Heysham in Lancashire, is still coming to terms with the loss of her son Toby who was stillborn at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary, part of the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Foundation Trust in January 2017 after a series of mistakes by staff who did not act on signs she had pre-eclampsia. Jenny, 33, has backed The Independent’s campaign for improved maternity safety and called on midwives to learn lessons after what happened to her family. She added: “This was an easily avoidable situation. They just didn’t piece it together, all they had to do was carry out a test and I lost my son because of it." Read full story Source: The Independent, 25 October 2020
  2. News Article
    Parents and professionals have been devastated by the impact of the pandemic on some of the UK’s most vulnerable patients Kelly Stoor gave birth to her daughter, Kaia, 14 weeks early. On 12 March, the midwife held her up for Kelly to see before whisking Kaia off to the neonatal unit for critical care. Kaia became seriously ill and was transferred to a hospital in Southampton, 50 miles away from home, for specialist treatment just before lockdown was imposed on 23 March. While there, she teetered on the edge of life and death for weeks and underwent life-saving surgery twice. The impact on Kelly, her husband, Max, and their other three children has been enormous. Hospital restrictions in April dictated that only one parent was allowed to visit. Both parents were not able not hold their daughter for the first time until 88 days after she was born. “It was extremely difficult,” says Kelly. “I wasn’t allowed to hold her because of Covid. I had to wear gloves if I was going to touch her. We didn’t know if she was going to make it, and Max and I weren’t allowed in together to be with her. There was one time I was with her for three hours and I couldn’t cope any more. I wanted to break.” Kelly is not alone. In the UK, at least 25,000 children are living with conditions that require palliative care support and their lives, along with those of their families, have been upended by the coronavirus pandemic and accompanying restrictions. A report by Rainbow Trust found that lockdown was a distressing experience for many; 80% of those surveyed by the charity in April said their situation was worse or much worse than before lockdown. Nearly 60% of parents, meanwhile, say that their mental health is worse than before the pandemic. Families have had to take on the strain of caring full-time for a child with a life-limiting illness, such as cancer or neurological conditions, with little to no support. There has been no respite, explains Dr Jon Rabbs, a consultant paediatrician and trustee for Rainbow Trust. When lockdown was announced, many community healthcare services had to stop face to face contact and special schools which supported children were also closed. “One of my families is at breaking point, they are so exhausted and worried,” he says. In child healthcare there have been delays, he says. Urgent treatment is always available but follow-up care has been cancelled or delayed in some places. “In my practice we have not missed any significant relapses,” he adds. “But imagine the worry not knowing whether things were going to be OK or not.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 22 October 2020
  3. News Article
    The parents of a three-year-old boy whose death was part of an alleged NHS cover-up have won a six year battle for the truth about how he died. Shropshire coroner John Ellery backed the parents of three-year-old Jonnie Meek in a second inquest into his death on Thursday and rejected evidence from nurses about what happened at Stafford Hospital in August 2014. Jonnie, who was born with rare congenital disability De Grouchy syndrome, died two hours after being admitted to hospital to trial a new feed which was being fed directly into his stomach. His parents, John Meek and April Keeling, from Cannock in Staffordshire, have always maintained their son died after a reaction to the milk feed caused him to vomit and suffocate. But they have been forced to battle what they believe was an attempt to hide what happened after they discovered attempts to alter their son’s medical history with claims he had experienced several cardiac arrests requiring resuscitation which never happened. In 2015, healthcare assistant Lauren Tew, who was with Jonnie and his mother when he died, told the HSJ that a statement in her name submitted to a child death overview panel stating Jonnie had died from a sudden cardiac arrest was false and she had never made such a statement. Another statement said Jonnie had been admitted to hospital for three weeks months before his death which also never happened. After his parents exposed the false statements an independent inquiry was launched, with three independent experts agreeing with Jonnie’s parents, and in April last year the High Court quashed the original inquest verdict that Jonnie died of natural causes and pneumonia. Speaking to The Independent Jonnie’s father said: “This does bring us some peace after six years. For the coroner to say he believes April over the nurses after all this time is a big weight lifted off her. “The hospital definitely decided to try and cover up what happened to Jonnie. We have always said we knew what happened and this has been a massive waste of resources. I am still very concerned about how these things can happen in the first place.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 15 October 2020
  4. News Article
    Too many English hospitals risk repeating maternity scandals involving avoidable baby deaths and brain injury because staff are too frightened to raise concerns, the chief inspector of hospitals has warned. Speaking at the opening session of an inquiry into the safety of maternity units by the health select committee, Prof Ted Baker, chief inspector of hospitals for the Care Quality Commission, said: “There are too many cases when tragedy strikes because services are not not doing their job well enough.” Baker admitted that 38% of such services were deemed to require improvement for patient safety and some could get even worse. “There is a significant number of services that are not achieving the level of safety they should,” he said. He said many NHS maternity units were in danger of repeating fatal mistakes made at what became the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS foundation trust (UHMBT), despite a high profile 2015 report finding that a “lethal mix” of failings at almost every level led to the unnecessary deaths of one mother and 11 babies. “Five years on from Morecombe Bay we have still not learned all the lessons,” Baker said. “[The] Morecombe Bay [report] did talk about about dysfunctional teams and midwives and obstetricians not working effectively together, and poor investigations without learning taking place. And I think those elements are what we are still finding in other services.” Baker urged hospital managers to encourage staff to whistleblow about problems without fear of recrimination. He said: “The reason why people are frightened to raise concerns is because of the culture in the units in which they work. A healthy culture would mean that people routinely raise concerns. But raising concerns is regarded as being a difficult member of the team.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 29 September 2020
  5. News Article
    Yesterday marked the second World Patient Safety Day, and this year’s theme shined a light on health worker safety – those on the frontline of the pandemic have been selfless in their sacrifices to care for an ailing global population. What has become ever clearer is that a health system is nothing without those who work within it and that we must prioritise the safety and wellbeing of health workers, because without safe health workers we cannot have safe patients. Improving maternity safety has been a priority for some time – although rare, when things go wrong the consequences are unthinkable for families and the professionals caring for them. Maternity negligence makes up 50% of the total value of negligence claims across all NHS sectors, according to the latest NHS Resolution annual report and accounts. It states there were claims of around £2.4 billion in 2019/20, which is in the region of £6.5 million a day. This cost says nothing of the suffering families and professionals associated. However, without investing in the maternity frontline we cannot hope to make integral systemic changes to improve maternity safety and save mothers’ and babies’ lives, writes Sara Ledger, head of research and development at Baby Lifeline in the Independent. "We owe it to every mother and baby to rigorously and transparently scrutinise the safety of maternity services, which will be in no small way linked to the support staff receive." Read full story Source: The Independent, 17 September 2020
  6. News Article
    The chief medical officers of the four UK nations are set to warn about a surge in admissions of severely ill, very young children later this year, due to the resurgence of a respiratory virus which has been suppressed by anti-covid measures, HSJ can reveal. Public Health England modelling shows a possible sharp rise in cases of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which can cause bronchiolitis, this autumn and winter, several senior sources said. The modelling shows between 20 and 50% more cases needing hospitalisation than normal, HSJ understands. Official projections conclude that such a surge would require, at least, a doubling of paediatric intenstive care beds and a significant increase in other critlcal care resources for sick children. Most of those expected to be affected by the rise in RSV are forecast to be three years old or younger. The UK’s four chief medical officers are considering the issue and planning to write to ministers to highlight it, the sources said, while NHS England is working on a response plan, and is expected to alert local NHS leaders. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 14 May 2021
  7. News Article
    The parents of a baby who died after medical errors are to push for a new inquest into his death, after they say a "cruel" inquest denied them justice. Hayden Nguyen died in 2016 after medics failed to treat an infection properly. However, despite the NHS trust admitting mistakes, coroner Shirley Radcliffe concluded the infant died of natural causes, after raising concerns about the hospital's initial investigation. Hayden was six days old when his parents took him to the Chelsea and Westminster hospital in west London in August 2016. He initially had a fever but rapidly deteriorated; he had a cardiac arrest and died within 12 hours of arriving there. An internal NHS investigation concluded eight errors were made in Hayden's care, and the root causes of his death were failure to identify the signs of shock and failure to act on abnormal test results. "When they had completed the investigation, they sat us down and took us through it line by line," says Alex Nguyen, Hayden's mother. "Although the content was incredibly disturbing, it was in a way healing and it helped a little bit with the grieving process." An inquest at Westminster Coroner's Court, conducted by Dr Radcliffe, followed. However, the coroner was not happy with the hospital's investigation. The hospital to issue a second report into Hayden's care, which halved the number of errors, and said the root cause of his death was the infection "which is known to have a high mortality". Armed with this second report, the coroner concluded that Hayden had died of natural causes. "What the coroner did was kill Hayden a second time," Hayden's father, Tum, told the BBC. Read full story Source: BBC News, 14 May 2021
  8. News Article
    A nurse accused of murdering eight babies in an alleged year-long killing spree at an NHS hospital has appeared in court. Lucy Letby, aged 31, appeared at Manchester Crown Court via videolink from HMP Peterborough on Monday morning. She has been charged the murder of five boys and three girls at the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital. The babies all died between June 2015 and June 2016. Read full story Source: The Independent, 10 May 2021
  9. News Article
    Infant mortality is not "openly discussed" among some communities, a charity worker in Birmingham said, as the city attempts to tackle a long-standing problem. For the last decade, Birmingham has had one of the highest rates of infant mortality in England. The city council has set up a taskforce in a bid to halve the number of deaths. It heard rates were highest in deprived areas and among Black, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi heritage families. Shabana Qureshi is the women wellbeing manager for the Ashiana Community Project, a charity which works to improve quality of life for those living in Sparkbrook. Figures from the 2011 census show 87% of its population identified as being from an ethnic group other than White British, with the largest ethnic group being Pakistani. Many of women she works with, she said "don't know how to ask the right questions" and so are "not informed" about issues. Many people in the communities they work with, she said, have low education levels and are more likely to suffer with maternity health issues, but find it difficult to access services. "[Infant mortality] is not something that is discussed openly," she said. "A lot of women live within extended families and are sometimes not aware of the risks, they live with these conditions and health inequalities." She said any services which hope to tackle these problems need to involve communities, and be designed to be relatable, culturally sensitive and maintain trust. Read full story Source: BBC News, 22 April 2021
  10. News Article
    An NHS trust has admitted failing to provide safe care and treatment for a mother and her baby boy, who died seven days after an emergency delivery. Mother Sarah Richford said it brought "some level of justice" for baby Harry's death in 2017. Lawyers for the East Kent Hospitals Trust pleaded guilty to the charge at Folkestone Magistrates Court. The trust said it had made "significant changes" and would "do everything we can to learn from this tragedy". Mrs Richford said: "Although Harry's life was short, hopefully it's made a difference and that other babies won't die". She added: "If somebody had done this before Harry was born he may be alive today." The prosecution by the Care Quality Commission followed an inquest in 2020, which found Harry's death was wholly avoidable and contributed to by neglect at Margate's Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital. The inquest found more than a dozen areas of concern in the care of Harry and his mother, including failings in the way an "inexperienced" doctor carried out the delivery, followed by delays in resuscitation. Coroner Christopher Sutton-Mattocks criticised the trust for initially saying the death was "expected", adding that an inquest was only ordered due to the family's persistence. Read full story Source: BBC News, 19 April 2021
  11. News Article
    A previously secret report into children’s services at a scandal-hit NHS hospital has revealed concerns over the safety of services including care of seriously ill babies were raised with managers back in 2015. A report by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) raised serious concerns over children’s services at East Kent Hospitals University Trust in 2015 including senior consultants refusing to work beyond 5pm and a shortage of nurses and junior doctors. It also found the neonatal intensive care unit was being staffed by general paediatric doctors instead of specialist neonatal consultants. The confidential report was given to The Independent and posted on the trust’s website this week after being mentioned in the terms of reference for an independent inquiry examining dozens of baby deaths at the trust. It had never been published by the trust, which three years later had its children’s services rated inadequate. A second major report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 2016 highlighted concerns that were not acted on and later featured in the avoidable death of baby Harry Richford, in 2017 which sparked the scandal into dozens more deaths and brain injuries. Bill Kirkup, who is leading the inquiry into East Kent’s maternity services, previously recommended Royal College reviews be registered with the CQC and shared openly by NHS trusts. In its report, the RCPCH said there was “resistance from some consultants to work extended hours” across the trust’s different services with signs of clinicians worked in silos at the different hospitals run by the trust. It warned that paediatric consultants were “spread too thinly across the service” and consultants were providing specialist clinics based on their interests rather than local need. There was “insufficient middle grade doctors to cover both sites” and there were “too few skilled nurses on the wards.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 24 March 2021
  12. News Article
    There was a "gross failure in basic care" which led to a baby being starved of oxygen during birth, a coroner said. Zak Ezra Carter died at the Royal Gwent Hospital, Newport, two days after being born in July 2018 at Ystrad Fawr Hospital in Caerphilly county. Gwent coroner Caroline Saunders said the monitoring of Zak and his mother Adele Thomas fell "well below the standards expected". She said she was reassured the health board had taken steps to improve care. Ms Thomas told the Newport hearing she felt "scared" and staff "didn't care" when she arrived to give birth on 20 July 2018. In a statement to the inquest she described being turned away from the centre after going into labour on three occasions, before being admitted on the fourth. Ms Thomas said she was initially offered paracetamol as pain relief at the midwife-led centre. She described "a lot of arguing between nurses", one of whom was "bolshie and rude and rough handled me", adding the midwives "did not appear to be in any rush". When Zak was born, he was described as being "white and pale" and without a heartbeat. He did not cry and was taken away to a room for resuscitation. Zak was transferred to the Royal Gwent Hospital where he died two days later. During the first stage of labour, Prof Sanders said "everything was progressing at a normal healthy rate and the fetal heart rate was recorded as completely normal". But she said it was "highly unusual" for the heart rate to not be documented contemporaneously, and the midwives had not been able to explain why they had not done so. Recording a narrative conclusion, Ms Saunders said the monitoring of Ms Thomas and her baby had "fallen well below the standards expected", leading to a "gross failure in basic care" of them in the later stages of labour. Read full story Source: BBC News, 18 March 2021
  13. News Article
    A baby boy was starved of oxygen and died after being left half-delivered for almost a quarter of an hour during a “chaotic” breech birth in an NHS maternity unit. Midwives failed to recognise baby Theo Ellis was in the breech, or bottom first, position until his mother Laura Ellis, 34, was already in advanced labour at Surrey’s Frimley Park Hospital. What followed was a catalogue of errors by midwives and doctors who failed to heed the emergency situation and raised the alarm too late. At one stage a paediatrician was made to stand outside the room by midwives while junior staff struggled to deliver Theo alone. A senior obstetrician was in surgery and a miscommunication by midwives and an on-call consultant meant she did not arrive until Theo was already dead. After his parents brought legal action against the NHS, Frimley Park Hospital has now admitted mistakes led to Theo’s death in April 2019. Ms Ellis and husband James are angry their son was classed as being stillborn which meant a coroner was not allowed to investigate his care during an inquest. There have been repeated calls to change the law to ensure the deaths of babies like Theo are investigated. His mother told The Independent: “I walked in with a healthy baby. I’d looked after him for nine months and they killed him in the process of giving birth. The hospital get to write that he was stillborn, which obviously is a huge benefit to them, because the coroner can’t get involved, which to me is just staggering." Read full story Source: The Independent, 9 March 2021
  14. News Article
    Making maternity wards safer for mothers and babies will need £400m of extra spending every year, hospital leaders have told The Independent. They warn that without increased funding, the NHS will not be able to fully implement recommendations made by an inquiry into poor maternity care at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals Trust – where dozens of babies died or were left brain damaged in the largest maternity scandal in NHS history. Multiple maternity care failings at hospitals across the country in the past 12 months have sparked concerns over the safety of mothers and their babies with MPs on the Commons Health Select Committee launching an investigation into the issue last year. Hospital leaders say even just covering existing shortfalls of 3,000 midwives and recruiting 20 per cent more obstetricians, will cost at least £250m a year. To pay for extra anaesthetists, neonatal nurses and other support staff could push the cost to more than £400m. Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts, told The Independent that ministers faced a choice of either making the extra cash available or forcing the NHS to cut money elsewhere. In a letter to MPs on the committee, Mr Hopson urged them to demand extra funding in its forthcoming report on maternity safety in an effort to force ministers to confront the issue. Read full story Source: The Independent,9 February 2021,
  15. News Article
    Failures to follow national guidelines to prevent group B Strep infections in newborn babies is leading to a postcode lottery of care and opportunities to stop deadly infections being missed, a new report has found. Nearly 90% of hospitals in the UK are not using the recommended test for GBS carriage – which costs around £11- despite clear guidance issued by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and Public Health England (PHE) that the test can significantly decrease false-negative results. Group B Strep is the UK’s most common cause of severe infection in newborn babies, causing sepsis, pneumonia, and meningitis. Approximately 800 babies a year in the UK develop group B Strep infection in their first 3 months of life, 50 babies will die, with another 70 survivors left with life-changing disabilities. Most of these infections could be prevented. Only a tiny number of NHS Trusts are following the key new recommendations around giving pregnant women information on group B Strep, offering testing to some pregnant women, and following Public Health England guidelines on testing for group B Strep. As a result, pregnant women face a postcode lottery, potentially receiving significantly different care from recommended practice. Read full story Source: Group B Strep Support, 1 February 2021
  16. News Article
    A newborn baby died after doctors caring for him failed to realise that the umbilical venous catheter (UVC) through which he was being fed and medicated was wrongly positioned, a coroner has found. Anna Crawford, assistant coroner for Surrey, called for guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) on the use of the catheters after hearing that none currently exist. Yo Li was born extremely prematurely at St Peter’s Hospital in Chertsey on 11 January 2019 and transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit, where he was put on mechanical ventilation. A UVC was inserted but it was wrongly positioned within his liver tissue and he died four days later. Read full story (paywalled) Source: BMJ, 29 January 2021
  17. News Article
    Rachel Hardeman has dedicated her career to fighting racism and the harm it has inflicted on the health of Black Americans. As a reproductive health equity researcher, she has been especially disturbed by the disproportionately high mortality rates for Black babies. In an effort to find some of the reasons behind the high death rates, Hardeman, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and three other researchers combed through the records of 1.8 million Florida hospital births between 1992 and 2015 looking for clues. They found a tantalising statistic. Although Black newborns are three times as likely to die as White newborns, when Black babies are delivered by Black doctors, their mortality rate is cut in half. "Strikingly, these effects appear to manifest more strongly in more complicated cases," the researchers wrote, "and when hospitals deliver more Black newborns." They found no similar relationship between White doctors and White births. Nor did they find a difference in maternal death rates when the doctor's race was the same as the patient's. Read full story Research paper Source: The Washington Post, 9 January 2021
  18. News Article
    An adoptive mother is calling for the NHS to improve its diagnosis for children exposed to alcohol in the womb, so their families can be helped. Amanda Boorman's two sons have Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) but they were not diagnosed correctly. She said: "This is a brain and body condition that is lifelong so really the professionals need to step up." Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) covers the various health and mental issues which can affect children. A spokesperson for the Department for Health and Social Care said: "We are committed to reducing future cases of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and we have asked NICE [National Institute for Healthcare Excellence] to produce a Quality Standard in England for FASD to help the health and care system improve diagnosis and care of those affected. "We have also published England's first Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders Health Needs Assessment to improve the lives of families living with it and increase understanding amongst clinicians and policy makers." Mrs Boorman, from Brent Knoll in Somerset, said: "There's no way an adoptive parent should ever have to go to a chief executive of a hospital and say 'what is your strategy for diagnosing FASD?' What needs to happen is that clinical commissioning groups, the boards of those, chief executives in hospitals, directors of children's services, social care and education need to be much more proactive." "What we've seen is reactive or just not really knowing - it's complete ignorance." Read full story Source: BBC News. 7 October 2021
  19. News Article
    A third of stillbirths at two south Wales hospitals could have been prevented with better care or treatment, an investigation has concluded. It emerged two years ago that more than 60 women suffered the heartbreak of a stillbirth at at the Royal Glamorgan, Llantrisant, and Prince Charles Hospital, Merthyr Tydfil, and that many of these were never reported or investigated. An independent panel set up by the Welsh Government to oversee improvements in these maternity units has now concluded that many of these babies could have been saved. It looked at whether the care provided to women and their babies between January 2016 and September 2018 fell below the standards expected. The failures were split into different levels of severity, known in the report as "modifiable factors". Their investigation looked at 63 stillbirths between January 1, 2016, and September 30, 2018, and discovered that 21 (33%) of them had at least one "major modifiable factor", meaning the stillbirth could potentially have been avoided. More than half (59%) of the 63 had at least one "minor modifiable factor" while in three-quarters (76%) of them "wider learning" was required. In only four of the 63 stillbirths the panel found no modifiable factors. The panel also discovered that "areas for learning" were identified in 59 of the 63 episodes of care reviewed. Read full story Source: Wales Online, 5 October 2021 Read report
  20. News Article
    Bristol Children’s hospital tried to ‘deceive’ Ben Condon’s parents about his death, NHS ombudsman says An eight-week-old baby died after “a catalogue of failings” in his treatment at a children’s hospital, which then tried to “deceive” his parents about his death, an official inquiry has found. Doctors failed to spot that Ben Condon was suffering from a deadly bacterial infection and did not give him antibiotics until an hour before he died, the NHS ombudsman said. “We found that Ben and his family suffered serious injustice in consequence of the failings we found in his care and treatment,” the parliamentary and health service ombudsman said in a report that contained damning criticisms of Bristol Children’s hospital. The errors were all “lost opportunities” to help Ben recover from his illness and so increased the risk of him dying. Read the full article here Source: The Guardian Also covered in the Independent
  21. News Article
    A catalogue of failures among prison and health professionals has been highlighted in an investigation report into the death of a teenager’s baby after she gave birth alone in her cell at the largest women’s prison in Europe. The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman published the devastating report into the events in September 2019 at HMP Bronzefield in Ashford, Middlesex on Wednesday. The case was first revealed by the Guardian and the baby’s death triggered 11 separate inquiries. The report details a disturbing series of events that culminated with the young woman, who cannot be named, being in “constant pain” on the night of 26 September and eventually passing out while giving birth. According to the report the teenager "appeared to have been regarded as difficult and having a ‘bad attitude’ rather than as a vulnerable 18-year-old, frightened that her baby would be taken away”. Failings included: There was confusion among different health professionals about her due date. The day before her baby was born she told a prison nurse she would kill herself or someone else if the baby was taken away from her, but this information was not adequately shared. On 26 September she was put on extended observation, meaning she should have been regularly checked but this did not happen. She rang the bell twice at 8.07pm and 8.32pm that day. A call was connected then immediately disconnected at 8.45pm. She did not press the bell again. Checks by prison officers at 9.27pm and 4.19am revealed “nothing untoward”. It was left to two prisoners to alert staff to the fact that there was blood in her cell at 8.21am on 27 September. Prisons and Probation ombudsman Sue McAllister said: “Ms A gave birth alone in her cell overnight without medical assistance. This should never have happened. Overall, the healthcare offered to Ms A in Bronzefield was not equivalent to that she could have expected in the community.” The publication of the report has triggered multiple calls for an end to the imprisonment of pregnant women from the Royal College of Midwives, NGOs and academics in the field. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 22 September 2021
  22. News Article
    Babies and mothers are at risk of injury and death because too many maternity units have not improved care despite a string of childbirth scandals, a Care Quality Commission (CQC) report has warned. In a highly critical report published on Tuesday, the CQC voiced serious concern that lessons are not being learned and that many incidents involving patients’ safety are still not being recorded. Some hospitals have been “too slow” to take the steps needed to make labour and birth safer, despite multiple inquiries, reports and recommendations to do so, it said. The CQC also found other persistent weaknesses in maternity care, including tension and difficulties between obstetric doctors and midwives and poor oversight of risks to patients during an in-depth inspection of maternity care at nine hospitals in England. The NHS has been criticised for major maternity scandals involving poor care, which sometimes persisted for many years, at trusts such as Morecambe Bay, East Kent and Shrewsbury and Telford. The government, NHS leaders and patients have pressed the NHS in England to overhaul maternity safety to reduce the number of babies being left brain-damaged or dead and mothers injured or dead as a result of poor care during childbirth. The watchdog also criticised hospitals for doing too little to seek the views from black, minority ethnic and poorer communities about how to improve their experience of giving birth. Black women are four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women, and Asian women twice as likely. “We know that many maternity services are providing good care, but we remain concerned that there has not been enough learning from good and outstanding services,” said Ted Baker, the regulator’s chief inspector of hospitals. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 21 September 2021
  23. News Article
    Folic acid is to be added to UK flour to help prevent spinal birth defects in babies, the government will announce. Women are advised to take the B vitamin - which can guard against spina bifida in unborn babies - before and during pregnancy, but many do not. It is thought that adding folic acid to flour could prevent up to 200 birth defects a year. Mandatory fortification - which the government ran a public consultation on in 2019 - would see everybody who ate foods such as bread getting more folic acid in their diets. Neural tube defects, such as spina bifida (abnormal development of the spine) and anencephaly, a life-limiting condition which affects the brain, affect about 1,000 pregnancies per year in the UK. Many babies diagnosed with spina bifida survive into adulthood, but will experience life-long impairment. Kate Steele, chief executive of Shine, a charity providing specialist support for people affected by spina bifida and hydrocephalus and which has campaigned for mandatory fortification of flour for more than 30 years, said she was "delighted" by the decision. "In its simplest terms, the step will reduce the numbers of families who face the devastating news that their baby has anencephaly and will not survive," she said. "It will also prevent some babies being affected by spina bifida, which can result in complex physical impairments and poor health." Read full story Source: BBC News, 20 September 2021
  24. News Article
    Doctors at a hospital in Birmingham mistakenly terminated a healthy unborn baby in a procedure instead of its sickly twin. The unidentified mother decided to abort one of the fetuses because it was suffering from restrictive growth, which increases the chances of stillbirth and puts the healthy baby at risk. During the procedure at Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation, surgeons accidentally terminated the wrong twin. The 2019 incident emerged in a Freedom of Information Act survey of hospital blunders. Dr Fiona Reynolds, chief medical officer at Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Trust, said: "A full and comprehensive investigation was carried out swiftly after this tragic case and the findings were shared with the family, along with our sincere apologies and condolences." "The outcome of that thorough review has led to a new protocol being developed to decrease the likelihood of such an incident happening again." Read full story Source: The Independent, 6 September 2021
  25. News Article
    A hospital has admitted liability for the death of a baby who was delivered stillborn three days after his mother’s complaints of fluid loss and severe pain were dismissed as wetting the bed. Jacob Jackson could have been born healthy, Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust (Sath) has accepted, if it had arranged an earlier delivery in October 2018 as his mother, Charlotte, had suggested. The incident happened 18 months after an external review had been ordered into serious maternity failings at the trust, which are now known to be the biggest maternity scandal in the history of the NHS. Charlotte said: “It makes me feel sick to my stomach that they knew there were problems – this sort of thing had been going on for decades. We keep getting fed the same lines that ‘lessons have been learned’. If lessons had been learned parents and babies wouldn’t be going through this.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 6 September 2021
×
×
  • Create New...