Comment: Medical neglect, blunder after blunder, a precious child is lost, two years’ investigation, no one cares, and no one’s responsible. Welcome to government-run medicine.
“A damning investigation has found that a three-year old boy died after systemic and catastrophic failings by Britain’s out-of-hours NHS services.”
“Sam Morrish was vomiting what appeared to be blood when staff at NHS Direct gave the case low priority and wrongly recorded crucial information provided by his parents.”
“When they failed to help, his desperate mother contacted the local GP out-of-hours service, where an unqualified call handler wrongly informed her that a nearby “treatment centre” would be able to help, when in fact he should have been sent immediately to Accident and Emergency.”
“An investigation by the Health Service Ombudsman is this week expected to lay bare a catalogue of failings in the treatment of the child, who died from an infection which was treated too late.”
“Last month Dr Sarah Wollaston, now chairman of the Commons health select committee, questioned Dame Julie Mellor, the Ombudsman, about why her investigation into Sam’s death has taken more than two years.” [1]
More:
“Sam Morrish had the kind of mischievous smile that could light up a room and an infectious energy that would rub off on everyone present.”
[...] “But the mishandling of Sam’s case was now compounded by a series of further mistakes.”
“The nurse recorded wrongly on the computer system Mrs Morrish’s information about the boy’s condition. Furthermore the call was recorded as routine rather than as the emergency it clearly was.”
“Increasingly anxious Mrs Morrish contacted the out-of-hours GP service, Devon Doctors, later that evening. Instead of recommending she take Sam to her nearest hospital’s Accident and Emergency department, she was instead told to go to the local treatment centre in Newton Abbott.”
[...] “Things got even worse at the treatment centre. Instead of seeing a doctor straight away the family were placed in a queue behind three other patients.”
“Growing increasingly frightened Mrs Morrish asked a passing nurse to help. On taking one look at the child, by now seriously ill, the nurse raised the alarm and Sam was rushed by ambulance the five miles to Torbay Hospital, run by South Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust in Torquay.”
“Here Mr and Mrs Morrish thought he would finally get the treatment he needed, but, astonishingly, he was not given the antibiotics he needed until three hours after they had been prescribed.” [2]
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[1] NHS Direct ‘failed dying three year-old’
[2] Three-year-old’s death ‘crushed our faith in NHS’