More than 7,500 doctors have signed a letter expressing their concerns about the decision to strike off a paediatrician for causing the death of a young boy.
They have warned that doctors may be less likely to admit mistakes after Hadiza Bawa-Garba’s name was removed from the medical register last week. More than £160,000 has been raised in a crowdfunding campaign to fund the junior doctor’s legal costs.
Bawa-Garba was convicted of gross negligence manslaughter over the death in 2011 of Jack Adcock, a six-year-old boy who had Down’s syndrome, and she received a suspended two-year prison sentence. She failed to spot that Jack, from Leicestershire, was suffering from septic shock and mistook him for a different child under a “do not resuscitate” order, telling colleagues to stop life-saving attempts when his heart stopped.
The letter, which was circulated among doctors yesterday and has been signed by many leading clinicians and high-profile consultants, says that the doctor’s mistake should be considered in the context of the pressures she was under.
“Patient safety is paramount and a culture of openness is critical,” it says. “Doctors frequently take on the work of two or more in order to keep our hospitals open. We have seen doctors punished for whistleblowing about unsafe staffing levels.
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“We now see them being held criminally responsible for mistakes made whilst working under these pressures, which, with chronic staff shortages, prolonged underfunding and low morale, now occur with worrying frequency.”
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, raised similar concerns, warning that the decision could have implications for patient safety if doctors felt they could not admit openly to their errors.
Jenny Vaughan, a consultant neurologist, told Channel 4 News that a number of doctors convicted of the same offence had gone back to work.
Charlie Massey, chief executive of the General Medical Council, said that it was important to differentiate between this case and “everyday mistakes”.