Resident (Junior) Doctors vote to strike

I'm not angry just resigned that our services don't function as well as they should. The police were good but open about thier chances of getting a conviction. It's the fact she was kicked whilst on the floor by a woman that really upsets me. It could have been so much worse.

The Guardian has an article today about the amount of compensation paid out in medical negligence cases, particularly in maternity. It makes for the most depressing read.

Ronib the maternity provision in some hospitals is dreadful. Goodness knows why but when you are spending more money on compensation than on the service itself, you know there's a huge problem!

£37 billion since 2019. How can this be?

ronib

£37 billion since 2019. How can this be?

Because there are so many mistakes made. Some of these are due to not having a regular midwife who sees you throughout the entire pregnancy which is why my grandchild was still born. Each midwife looked at previous measurements and assumed that it was a difference in the way things were measured from person to person. My family had a good case for suing but agreed with the hospital authority in our area would introduce the record keeping that another authority used which had a dramatic affect on stillbirths.
At the hospital where my other grandchild was born, it was the most nerve wracking experience with the midwife sounding alarms regularly and a Dr putting their head around the door, giving a brief instruction before disappearing again. By the time they did the emergency operation (after trying forceps) the baby was compromised with the cord wrapped around its neck. Minutes later and he would have been dead or severely brain damaged. A friend of hours had the same experience at the same hospital and she nearly haemorrhaged to death let alone the distress to the baby.
We all know that pregnancy is precarious but the percentage of cases in our family where it was either tragic or nearly so, makes me believe that the service needs overhauling. My midwife friend agrees.

Beyond words icanhandthemback.

foxie48

Ronib the maternity provision in some hospitals is dreadful. Goodness knows why but when you are spending more money on compensation than on the service itself, you know there's a huge problem!

It hasn't improved in the years since my DC were born.
And I thought my last experience was dire, thankfully the baby was all right but no thanks to the staff who were nowhere to be seen.

I can see no value in blaming medical malpractice on either the Conservatives or Labour. Blame must lie firmly with medical professionals? Politicians are not in the delivery room! Also I note that some ethnic minorities are badly served with maternity care. Again this is for the medical profession to address.

Fine, ronib, but it isn't always medical malpractice that causes the failure.

MaizieD £27 billion paid out however so assuming some kind of malpractice? Politicians do not deliver babies…..??

Two of mine were born in the mid 80’s. We had continuity of care from gp, consultant, midwife then health visitor, we had relaxation sessions at our GP surgery from people directly involved in our care and later the care of our babies. I agreed to demonstrate breast feeding with a twrenty month old toddler in support.
It feels like total luxury when compared to those babies as new mothers thirty/35 years later. My daughters both credit me as their emergency person when struggling with their babes

I’m shocked by how poor our maternity and post natal care is

1982 - a filthy hospital, no choice of where to go although we were in London with several hospitals around, staff more interested in chatting and going off for lunch than staying with a mother about to give birth, emergency button not working. Mother shouting but no-one came.

Luckily father arrived during his lunch-hour and delivered the baby, ensuring the cord was not around her neck.

Thankfully she is fine.

There's a shortage of obstetricians and midwives which affects the quality of the service. You can't cancel the delivery of a baby by putting it on a waiting list for a few extra weeks because you don't have sufficient staff or your neonatal nurse has called in sick. Neither can you separate the quality of our maternity services from the political decisions that have been made over the past years. A midwife or a doctor can only see one patient at a time and anyone who has had any experience of working on labour wards knows how busy they can be, you need staff available 24/7, 365 days a year and that's different to most areas of medicine except perhaps A&E (except you can keep patients in A&E waiting for hours if you triage them well). Is it any surprise that our maternity service has suffered so much?

ronib

MaizieD £27 billion paid out however so assuming some kind of malpractice? Politicians do not deliver babies…..??

The amount paid out isn’t related to how serious clinical negligence was, but to the effect on the child, and the cost of lifetime care provision for those who were seriously disabled. So compensation may be sufficient for an average lifespan.

The point is Casdon exactly who is responsible for medical negligence? Is it the consultant obstetrician, resident doctor, midwife or the hospital administrator or politicians who refuse to fund maternity provision to a safe and appropriate level?

No doubt you would have to trawl through lots of reports and court cases to find the answer, ronib.

Is that the point, ronib. I thought you’d said you had read the Ockenden Report? I begin to think you must suffer from iatrophobia.

No I didn’t say that I had read the Ockenden Report - I asked AI! Casdon I don’t think it would be entirely irrational to have a fear of doctors given my past medical experience… however leave that aside.

If you read it, it will improve your understanding ronib. Most clinical negligence is a multi faceted system failure, not wholly attributable to an individual doctor being incompetent. I’ve got an irrational fear of spiders, but I know it’s not evidence based.

But I didn’t say that it wasn’t a multi faceted system failure ….. Casdon . I am trying to understand how negligence occurs in a maternity delivery suite. The key players have to be the staff in attendance surely?

There is so much more to it than that ronib. You cite medical malpractice, which is a term only applying to doctors, and as well as other staff, system failures can relate to resource failures as well - in fact they usually do. If you were to read any of the reports into maternity units you would see the bigger picture. I’m not in any way trying to excuse failures, but there is no quick fix solution to these issues and just blaming doctors is not fair or appropriate.

Which staff in attendance? Women in labour wards are attended to by many staff because labour doesn't fit into neat packets of time that fit shifts. Do you blame the doctor or midwife who couldn't leave another patient because they needed urgent help, the one who hadn't noticed a change in fetal heart beat and had gone home at the end of their shift, perhaps the one who'd called in sick at the last moment meaning there was insufficient staff to run safely. There's so many possible people to pick.
This attitude of "someone has to be blamed" runs deep in our society when perhaps people are doing their best to keep going because they are working in extremely stressful and difficult. environments. I don't think anyone goes to work intending to be negligent do they?
A major city hospital has to cancel operations in one of its theatres if heavy rain is forecast because sewage comes up through the sinks. You couldn't make this stuff up!

foxie48

Which staff in attendance? Women in labour wards are attended to by many staff because labour doesn't fit into neat packets of time that fit shifts. Do you blame the doctor or midwife who couldn't leave another patient because they needed urgent help, the one who hadn't noticed a change in fetal heart beat and had gone home at the end of their shift, perhaps the one who'd called in sick at the last moment meaning there was insufficient staff to run safely. There's so many possible people to pick.
This attitude of "someone has to be blamed" runs deep in our society when perhaps people are doing their best to keep going because they are working in extremely stressful and difficult. environments. I don't think anyone goes to work intending to be negligent do they?
A major city hospital has to cancel operations in one of its theatres if heavy rain is forecast because sewage comes up through the sinks. You couldn't make this stuff up!

One of mine was born on Christmas day. Lovely midwife with me all night and delivery was getting close that morning and she apologised for leaving me but her kids were at home waiting for her. When she was coming on shift the next night she came to see me before her shift started, wanted to give baby a cuddle and check how I was, she'd read my notes and knew how things had gone, not well really as things suddenly went downhill and I had an emergency C-section. I think she felt she'd have managed it better but who knows? Either way I wouldn't have wanted her to give up christmas with her own young children

It’s not the blame game at all foxie48. Don’t you think it’s vital to understand exactly how the NHS has ended up with such a huge bill for compensation for mistakes ? Other countries seem to approach childbirth differently. Or does this country never improve upon its practices? I never did fall for Amanda Pritchard’s line that the NHS offered the best value for money. Clearly it doesn’t.

Your facile generalisations are stunning, ronib. What percentage of babies born in England does the £27billion cover?

What attempts have you made to really understand the problems facing the NHS, apart from asking AI to summarise a report for you?

Why are you expecting random people on social media to give you definitive answers?