Four Babies Died After Junior Surgeon Left To Cope On His Own! This Is Represhensible!!! The Is What You Get With SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE!

Telegraph News UK

Babies died after junior surgeon left to cope on his own

written by Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor

Wednesday July 28, 2010

Four babies died at an NHS heart unit where managers were trying to raise the number of patients being treated in order to avoid closure, according to a damning report.

The infants died within three months of each other after being operated on by a relatively junior surgeon who was appointed to raise patient numbers at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, an external review has found.

Caner Salih, who was left alone on his second day in the post, complained about the age of the equipment and poor working practices at the children’s cardiac unit. He blew the whistle to bosses after four of his patients died within three months and asked to stop operating.

His concerns were ignored and it was only when journalists began to ask questions that the trust managers informed the Strategic Health Authority [SHA] and the health care regulator, the Care Quality Commission, says the report.

It may have been up to six weeks after Mr Salih raised concerns that children’s heart surgery at the trust was suspended. The report, conducted by senior doctors at the SHA, recommends that operations at the unit should never take place again because it is unsafe.

The case raises echoes of the Bristol heart scandal in which 35 babies died and dozens more were left brain damaged amid lax safety and monitoring at the Bristol Royal Infirmary in the early 1990s.

The report, written by Dr Bill Kirkup, the director of clinical standards at the South Central Strategic Health Authority, says that managers at the John Radcliffe were aware that a forthcoming review of children’s heart surgery was likely to recommend the closure of small units which handled few patients. The Oxford Cardiac Centre, based at the hospital, is the smallest in the country, treating just 100 patients a year.

In order to try to boost patient numbers, managers took on another consultant surgeon. The job was Mr Salih’s first consultant post in the UK after working in Australia.

But the report says he was left alone when the senior consultant, Stephen Westaby, went on holiday for three weeks the day after he started.

The report does not criticise Prof Westaby directly but refers to him being "idiosyncratic" and that nurses and anaesthetists had adapted to his ways of working.

Four babies on whom Mr Salih operated died between December 2009 and February 2010. He complained to managers after finding it impossible to continue to operate with what he said was out-of-date equipment and working practices, the report says.

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