In an article today, The Independent has revealed that “dozens of babies have died or been left brain-damaged after errors during childbirth” at the maternity unit at the Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham.
The article has reported that families are often having to fight for their right to answers with the Trust “failing to properly investigate some [baby] deaths for months”.
A Senior Clinical Midwife at the Trust, Ms Brydon, told The Independent that her confidence in the management nosedived to the point she instigated a letter to the Trust board in 2018 which was signed by midwives and doctors warning of fears for patient safety due to staffing shortages. Sometime shortly after the letter, there were 35 vacant full-time midwife posts at the Trust. By December 2020 this had risen to 73 vacant midwife posts.
Ms Brydon further said:
“Quite a lot of the time when I was on that [committee], there were things that were clearly awful, that should have been triggering statements from staff, that were just swept under the carpet for whatever reason; it was someone’s friend etc. That didn’t happen very often. But it did happen.”
Clinical negligence claims against Nottingham University Hospitals Maternity Unit
The Independent revealed that there have been 201 clinical negligence claims against the Trust since 2010. They reported that:
“In the 201 claims, there were 15 deaths, 19 stillbirths, 46 cases of brain damage and 18 cases of cerebral palsy. A total of 25 cases were caused by delays in treatment, another 15 by a failure to respond to an abnormal foetal heart rate and 13 attributed to complications not being recognised.”
Families who have been affected by the care provided spoke out in the article advising that they had to fight for answers with families not being involved in the serious incident investigation processes.
The Chief Executive of Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Tracy Taylor, told The Independent:
“We apologise from the bottom of our hearts to the families who have not received the high level of care they need and deserve, we recognise the effects have been devastating.”
At Nelsons, our team of medical negligence solicitors are currently assisting a number of families concerning the care provided by the maternity unit at the Queen’s Medical Centre.
How Nelsons can help
Emily Rose is an Associate in our expert Medical Negligence team, which is ranked in Tier One of the independently researched publication, The Legal 500.
If you have experienced poor medical treatment, our specialist team can provide you with support regarding your circumstances. Please contact Emily or another member of the team in Derby, Leicester or Nottingham on 0800 024 1976 or via our online form for more information.