Hospital admits error that paralysed girl.

A teenage schoolgirl was left paralysed from the waist down when a spinal anaesthetic was left in too long after a routine operation, a hospital has admitted.

Sophie Tyler, 17, of Risca, near Newport, south Wales, will never walk again after an epidural was mistakenly left in place for more than two days.

A medical law expert is now calling on bosses at a leading UK children's hospital to ensure lessons are learned from the devastating error.

Their admission of liability has left the way open for a full settlement, providing Sophie with financial support for the rest of her life.

Mother Sue Tyler spoke today of how the tragic error transformed her daughter from a normal outgoing teenager overnight.

Sophie was 14 on May 27 2008 when she was admitted to Birmingham Children's Hospital for surgery to remove gallstones.

While the operation was successful, an epidural to control pain was left in place too long, causing permanent damage to her spinal cord.

The day after the operation, she complained of numbness in her right leg, but the epidural continued to be pumped into her spine as she felt no pain.

After two days of receiving the anaesthetic, the numbness had spread to both legs and Sophie was barely able to move her feet.

Despite warnings that something was seriously wrong, hospital staff failed to halt the painkilling infusion until the night of May 29.

The next day she underwent an MRI scan which revealed the anaesthetic had entered her spinal cord and damaged the membranes, paralysing her from the waist down.

The hospital trust has now admitted liability. Tim Deeming, medical law expert with Irwin Mitchell solicitors, representing the Tyler family, said: "Sophie and her family have been devastated by what has happened.

"Other than suffering from gallstones, Sophie was a very healthy and active young girl. She and her family put their trust in the hospital and believed that within a few days she would be on the road to recovery.

"At the age of 14, to be told the news that you will never walk again is unimaginable and to discover that mistakes were entirely avoidable has been incredibly hard for them to cope with."

He added: "Birmingham Children's Hospital has a reputation, both nationally and internationally, for clinical excellence, which is why it is extremely important, both to protect future patient welfare and to provide public reassurance, that the hospital learns important lessons from what happened to Sophie.

"We very much hope that the staff responsible have already been retrained so that similar tragedies can be avoided and I am glad that they have now admitted responsibility.

"Although no amount of compensation will ever turn back the clock for Sophie, she will need specialist care and support for the rest of her life.

"The Trust's full admission of liability now paves the way for a settlement which will provide Sophie with financial support to pay for the special equipment and care she now needs."

He said: "This is an important case which has allowed our client to access justice and secure the lifetime of future care she needs but it would not have been possible without the support of legal aid."

Mrs Tyler said: "My daughter's life has completely changed as a result of what happened.

"From being an outgoing teenager, her life has altered overnight and we have all had to come to terms with what has happened.

"Sophie is still taking her A-levels and hopes to then go to university, but to do so, she has had to be very determined and needs a lot of support to enable her to achieve her goals."

Dr Vin Diwakar, chief medical officer at Birmingham Children's Hospital, said: "We are deeply sorry for the unimaginable distress we have caused Sophie and her family as a result of the care she received at our hospital three years ago.

"The care we provided fell below our usual high standards and since then we have implemented a whole series of changes to try to ensure that this never happens again."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hospital-admits-error-that-paralysed-girl-2346785.html

Good #nutrition means something different for #cancer patients than it does for healthy adults:

http://t.co/EEBxGKQ

#Nursing is no longer the caring profession

 http://is.gd/P8VhmC < as they rise through the ranks patients are seen as a nuisance !

Police and council ‘investigated’ scandal hospital concerns six times

Police and council officers had at least six chances to investigate concerns about the safety of disabled people in a private “hospital” in the two years before the abusive regime was finally exposed by the BBC.

The Panorama investigation uncovered serious allegations of abuse at Winterbourne View, a private hospital for people with learning difficulties, near Bristol.

But it emerged this week that there were at least seven “alerts” notifying the authorities of safety concerns at Winterbourne View between October 2009 and August 2010, nine months before the documentary was aired in May this year.

Six of the alerts were dealt with by the council’s safeguarding team and investigated by Avon and Somerset police, while a seventh was investigated by Castlebeck, the company that ran Winterbourne View. At least three of the alerts reportedly related to the use of restraint or physical abuse by hospital staff.

South Gloucestershire Council has already faced criticism for apparently failing to follow-up concerns raised by a whistleblower in October 2010.

But the new evidence raises fresh questions over why the council failed to uncover the alleged abuse that was later exposed by Panorama, despite the number of safeguarding concerns raised during those two years.

A South Gloucestershire Council spokesman admitted that the referrals go back even further than October 2009.

He said the council received 19 safeguarding referrals between the opening of Winterbourne View in 2006 and 12 May 2011, when it learned about the Panorama programme.

Of these 19 referrals, 17 came from managers at Winterbourne View and two from charge nurses, while 15 concerned the behaviour of members of staff.
The council spokesman said a serious case review set up in the wake of the Panorama documentary would “look in detail at each of these alerts and consider the appropriateness of the multi-agency safeguarding response to them”, while the council had also launched its own internal investigation.

Avon and Somerset police declined to comment because of its ongoing investigation into the alleged abuse at Winterbourne View, as well as the serious case review, which is examining the actions of all the organisations involved.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC), which regulates health and adult social care in England, said it was passed details of all seven of the alerts.

A CQC spokeswoman said it was “the job of the local authority or the police to investigate these incidents and to hold the provider or staff to account if necessary”.

But she added: “The issue at Winterbourne View was not what was known and reported, but what was concealed – the horrific abuse of vulnerable people which was exposed by weeks of secret filming by Panorama.”

CQC said that these kind of safeguarding referrals were “shocking but sadly not atypical” of such facilities. Last year, CQC received 11,000 “notifications” of serious injury, and nearly 3,500 notifications of police investigations.

Castlebeck has now announced the closure of three of its care facilities for people with learning difficulties, including Winterbourne View.

This week, the company agreed to close Arden Vale, near Coventry, another “hospital” that provides “care” for people with learning difficulties and mental health conditions, after CQC served a legal notice proposing to remove Arden Vale’s registration.

CQC had raised “serious concerns” about care standards at Arden Vale, including the inappropriate use of restraint, and took action when it saw no evidence of the necessary improvements.

Last week, a Castlebeck residential home on the edge of Bristol, Rose Villa, was closed following a string of concerns about care standards and the suspension of four staff members.

Castlebeck said it was “vigorously addressing concerns that have been raised about some of our services”.

It has also received formal warning notices relating to two other care facilities, Croxton Lodge in Melton Mowbray and Cedar Vale in Nottingham, where CQC has again raised concerns about the potential safety of people with learning difficulties.

http://www.disabledgo.com/blog/2011/08/police-and-council-%e2%80%98investigated%e2%80%99-scandal-hospital-concerns-six-times/

#CarerWatch Forum & the risk of potentially 'libellous' hyperlinks

http://wp.me/p1seqm-8i

#ATOS #DebbieCarr : Forum discussing the delightful Debbie..

http://www.abcofesa.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=722

#DEBBIECARR #ATOS and what she thinks of her clients...

Where she works

Down & Outs ???

Down & Outs Again ???

The Disabled Are Depressing ???

At least a better class of - Yes again, Down & Outs ???

Even More "Down & Outs" ???

To quote Jimmy Cricket, "and there's more" - "Down and Outs" ???

http://blacktrianglecampaign.org/2011/08/06/debbie-carr-atos-hcp-thinks-clients/

#ATOS. DEBBIE CARR worker sneers at 'down and outs' !

Messing up in spades is how we've previously described Atos Healthcare, the private firm with a £100million Government contract to assess who deserves sickness benefits and who's faking it.

Last month it was revealed that 150,000 people who were refused full benefits by Atos had that decision overturned on appeal.

If that makes Atos sound heartless, it's nothing compared to what one of its assessors has been posting on her Facebook page in Middlesbrough.

Among Debbie Carr's comments about the sick and disabled, there's: "Oh god another day here with the down and outs arggggg!" And: "Well that's the end of my holidays! Back to work tomorrow with the down and outs I suppose..."

And: "Thank god it's Friday last day in this god forsaken place with the down and outs!"

The company told us: "Atos Healthcare is investigating the claims made about inappropriate comments written by one of its healthcare professionals on a social media website. Atos Healthcare is committed to providing a high quality, professional service to the DWP and expects the same of all its employees. Where it is found that these standards are not adhered to, this is taken very seriously and appropriate disciplinary action taken."

Debbie Carr put the phone down when we called. None of the comments on her page - now removed - were protected by a privacy wall and they could be read by anyone, including those being assessed by Atos.

Among them was a disability claimant who said: "It is humiliating and embarrassing enough having to go for one of these tests without Atos employees setting up Facebook accounts and having a laugh at our misfortune."

Another said: "I am hoping that you will support disabled and genuinely sick people everywhere and do what you can to stamp out this despicable behaviour. Society is being divided into two groups, those who are fortunate enough to have their health and employment, and those without either.

The first group are being encouraged to criminalise and vilify the latter group."

http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/2011/08/atos-worker-laughs-at-down-and.html

Do not resuscitate...final word IS WITH medical staff...

Addenbrooke’s hospital, which is disputing the family’s account of Janet Tracey’s death. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

 

The case of Janet Tracey who died in Addenbrooke's hospital after family claims that a "do not resuscitate" order was put in her medical notes will, no doubt, encourage health managers to check how well staff and patients are acquainted with the use of such orders.

They have been given official notice to do so before. In 2000, the Department of Health in England reminded local trusts they must have appropriate policies. This followed warnings from doctors that junior staff lacked proper guidance and training and from the charity Age Concern that older people were being written off.

These warnings came after Jill Baker, 67, from Southampton, who had stomach cancer and was being treated for septicaemia, discovered after leaving hospital that a "do not resuscitate" order had been written in her notes by a junior doctor. Neither she nor her husband had been consulted.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) attempts to restore breathing or blood flow to those whose heart has stopped beating or who have stopped breathing. It can include using electric shocks to try to correct the rhythm of the heart, repeatedly pushing down firmly on the patient's chest and inflating the lungs with a mask or tube inserted into the windpipe.

But while TV medical dramas may suggest it is often successful, statistics tell another story.

Only 15-20% who have such treatment ever go home, according to the British Medical Association (BMA), which, together with the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and Resuscitation Council, offers professional guidance on when Do not attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (DNACPR) orders – to give them their full name – should be prepared.

Rib fractures and brain injury are significant risks, says the NHS's policy guidance in Scotland while its leaflet for patients, relatives and carers says: "Most patients never get back the physical or mental health they had before they were resuscitated. Some have brain damage or go into a coma."

In an era when nearly seven in 10 people die in hospital – and most have "do not resuscitate" orders – there is increasing pressure for more mentally competent adult patients to help plan towards the end of their lives.

Adults can legally refuse medical treatment, even if that leads to their death. But the medical profession is also clear that doctors cannot be required to give treatment against their clinical judgment, although they should offer patients the chance of a second opinion, if possible.

The General Medical Council (GMC), last year said there was no absolute obligation to prolong life.

In 2005, it won a case on appeal brought by Leslie Burke who had a degenerative brain condition. He had claimed a legal right to artificial nutrition and hydration, come what may, rather than give doctors the ultimate say.

The GMC said the ruling meant that doctors had no legal or ethical obligation to agree to a patient's request if they consider the treatment was not in the patient's best interests.

The Scottish government is blunt on the issue. Its patient information leaflet says that while the healthcare team "must listen to your opinions and to anybody you want involved … you cannot demand treatment that will not work".

In England, where successive governments have trumpeted a mantra of patient choice, Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, has stopped short of a national policy.

The Department of Health told the Guardian: "Our end of life care strategy commended the joint statement by the BMA, RCN and the Resuscitation Council as a basis for local policy-making.

"There is a substantial amount of expert guidance available to assist those making complex decisions in discussion with other members of the healthcare team, the patient and their family."

Yet a number of soon-to-be abolished strategic health authorities in England want to harmonise policies across local care settings, including hospitals, hospices and residential homes.

In the words of Mike Richards, the government's end-of-life czar, this "will minimise future problems with cross-boundary working by encouraging a consistent – or at least compatible – approach nationwide".

A draft East Midlands document, for instance, says that there should be sensitive discussion with patients who want to insist on resuscitation in an attempt "to secure their understanding and acceptance of the DNACPR decision".

It adds: "Although individuals do not have the right to demand that doctors carry out treatment against their clinical judgment, the person's wishes to receive treatment should be respected wherever possible".

It will be April 2013 before the recently published regional policy in the East of England, where Addenbrooke's is based, is fully implemented in all its trusts.

It says: "A patient who has capacity has no legal right to demand CPR (or any other medical treatment) if the responsible senior clinician and multi-professional healthcare team judge that it would not be medically successful in achieving medical life."

It says that when a "do not resuscitate" decision has been made:

"Opportunities to sensitively inform patients and relevant others should be sought unless it is judged that the burden of such a discussion would outweigh the possible benefit for the patient."

It also says that "where death is unavoidable, [a patient] should be allowed to die a natural death and it may not be appropriate in these circumstances to discuss a DNACPR decision".

NHS Scotland made quite clear why it had adopted a national policy last year. "The increased movement of patients and staff between different care settings makes a consistent approach to this complex and crucial area a necessity," it said.

In addition, there was uncertainty about the process of making decisions that CPR should not be attempted. Local variations could cause misunderstandings and lead to distressing incidents for patients, families and staff.

Vivienne Nathanson, director of professional activities at the BMA and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, said it would be helpful for there to be a national policy in England, "because it means patients, families and healthcare teams know what the rules are".

She said: "Clinicians do not want to do things that are futile. They know when [CPR] can't make a difference. All it may do is reinstitute sensation. You don't want to do something that gets a little way but will not succeed.

"For a lot of doctors, this is instituting a lack of dignity, doing something because you can rather than because it will make a difference. Ethically, you should not do anything to a patient that will not benefit them."

Nathanson said decisions not to resuscitate had to be made case by case.

"There is no way of saying 'the following types of patient will not be resuscitated'."

Communication was vital and all hospitals should have leaflets to help discussions with relatives. "There is very good research that when you tell people bad news, they don't remember all of it."

In addition, doctors needed "to help people understand that for most people the process of dying is quite a simple slipping away. It is not violent or traumatic." Fear, said Nathanson, "leads to people wanting resuscitation seeing, say, cardiac arrest as a sudden and violent event, but sometimes the heart simply stops when you get to that stage of a terminal illness."

Families of mentally competent adult patients had "no right to anything in law but in practice, we always try to talk to the family ... but with the patient's permission. You won't talk to a family because you don't like what a patient said. You talk to the family where the patient can't give their views or you talk to the family to explain to the family."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/aug/26/do-not-resuscitate-medical-patient?CMP=twt_gu

#ATOS had #CARERWATCH forum suspended over a five month old link...

PLEASE leave comments on the link provided, it is very important to explain EXACTLY how ATOS have been conducting themselves..nothing short of BULLY tactics !

http://www.latentexistence.me.uk/atos-had-carerwatch-forum-suspended-over-a-five-month-old-link/

#ATOS :People Power has forced controversial benefits contractor ATOS into retreat

Sarah Evans Andover

26th August 2011 at 15:57

Atos’s climbdown, has to be welcomed, even if its responses to me, the Morning Star, to CarerWatch and to The Herald are disingenuous given that they never tried to contact CarerWatch.

Atos may have gone into retreat but they’ve been dragging their feet for much of the week, failing to provide CarerWatch with any evidence to back up their allegations, and the question remains as to why they never went straight to CarerWatch in the first place, but instead leant on their website forum’s host.
Today CarerWatch has revealed that Atos has finally provided them with a time and date for the allegedly libellous content. That content was not written by a member of CarerWatch, but is merely a link, in a private forum, to an article on another site and that article is still there in the public domain, so why on earth did Atos take issue with CarerWatch?

Obviously more questions need to be asked about the legitimacy of Atos’ actions and allegations.

Read CarerWatch’s latest letter to Atos here.

The vulnerable people who depend on that forum, or any of the other websites Atos has silenced, need far more than what Atos have offered to CarerWatch so far, not least an apology, and better still to know why Atos didn’t approach CarerWatch or any of the other disability action group websites before leaning on their web hosts.

But we all need assurances that they won’t try using these bully boy tactics again: CarerWatch is leading the way for all of us in that fightback.

The Morning Star’s Will Stone first revealed how ATOS uses legalistic bully-boy tactics to silence its critics, going straight to the website host with the threat that the author of the site, in this case CarerWatch, has libelled them. The host immediately takes down the site, leaving vulnerable people who depend on the support and information those websites provide even more isolated and devastated – in this case a private, members-only forum.

The closing down of CarerWatch’s forum by Atos has shocked not just disability action groups but the chief executive of Citizen’s Advice Scotland Lucy McTernan, Anne Begg MP and many others. And it is perhaps this united show of disgust at the care firm’s actions that has put the Atos media machine on the back foot and try to spin their way out.

Commenting in The Herald this week, Atos said: “It was never our intention to close down the CarerWatch forum. Our request was that the libellous content relating to Atos Healthcare and our employees be taken down in order to protect the reputation of our employees and company.”

So, Atos, why didn’t you contact CarerWatch first to give them the opportunity? That question remains to be answered by Atos, despite my asking them several times.

There are wider issues too around the way in which Atos treats vulnerable people – and it is the work of the disability action groups, charities, community groups, Citizen’s Advice and MPs which has forced inquiries into staff and doctors who work for Atos and the way they treat some of the most vulnerable in society.

But we also need to ask what more we can do to stop private companies engaged in work that should be done by the public sector using their legal muscle to shut up their critics. If government agencies and local government can’t do it then why should Atos be able to?

This article has been reproduced from my own website where all the links can be found. For more information visit:

http://sarahevanslabour.blogspot.com/2011/08/people-power-has-forced-controversial.html

Second death in British care home...

Another elder care facility in another country treating  our family members as profit loss statistics rather than human beings, when will it stop? Obviously never if left to the industry to self regulate. Lets start showing up unannounced to check on loved ones, I seriously encourage all who have loved ones whether elderly or disabled in care facilities to get together with friends and loved ones and make a roster and start showing up unannounced at least twice a month check your loved one out for the day and get them a full medical so you can keep on top of their care. The  care facility industry has proven that they can not be trusted.

http://disabledaccessdenied.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/second-death-in-care-home-probe-in-england/

Assisted suicide could be 'legalised' in groundbreaking case

http://t.co/fQaBxyN

#NHS #Cover-up: #Swansea Welsh NHS trust protected Paul FLYNN !

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=in_the_back&issue=1294

Thanks to an injunction obtained by an NHS trust, the fact Paul Flynn was in “a role he clearly was not equipped or trained for” was kept secret for three years