Back to Blame

Js Bamrah,Ramesh Mehta

doi:10.38192/11.1.3

Abstract

The death of Jack Adcock in 2011 made headlines all around the world for many reasons. He was a 6-year-old child, admitted to Leicester Royal Infirmary (LRI) in February 2011 who died of sepsis and pneumonia 11 hours later. The paediatric registrar Dr. Hadiza Bawa-Garba had failed to diagnose his condition, resulting in criminal proceedings and her erasure from the medical register in 2017. This article gives a glimpse of the controversial case, tries to relate this to all medical specialties, and offers some guidance on how to avoid a similar situation developing.

Highlights

The death of Jack Adcock in 2011 made headlines all around the world for many reasons
She used her unique position to provide necessary and effective health information to women in underprivileged communities. She received a first-class degree in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of Southampton, where she received the Physiology Society Prize and went onto study medicine, receiving outcomes of ‘Merit’ and ‘Excellent’ in many modules including in her finals
Expert body entitled to reach all those conclusions, including the important factor weighing in favour of Dr Bawa-Garba that she is a competent and useful doctor, who presents no material continuing danger to the public, and can provide considerable IT failure, the Trust’s paediatric observation priority score tool was not sufficiently robust or easy to interpret, test results were relayed by telephone but no abnormal results were flagged up, there was a failure by nursing staff to recognise abnormal observations and record and monitor according to clinical need, the Trust process for handover between medical and nursing staff was poor, and there was a failure to communicate to the child’s family the importance of not giving enalapril