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NHS trust fined £800,000 for baby’s death by negligence

NHS trust fined £800,000 for baby’s death by negligence

NHS trust fined £800,000 for baby’s death by negligence

NHS trust fined £800,000 for baby’s death by negligence

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  • Nottingham University Hospitals entered guilty plea and was fined £800,000.
  • Penalty imposed on an NHS trust for maternity care is biggest ever.
  • Infant passed away after 23 minutes after being delivered at Queen’s Medical Center.
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After acknowledging shortcomings in the treatment of an infant who passed away after 23 minutes, an NHS trust was fined £800,000.

Wynter Andrews, who was born in 2019 at the Queen’s Medical Center and later passed away, was cared for by Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH), which entered a guilty plea.

The penalty imposed on an NHS trust for maternity care is the biggest ever.

A “record of failings,” according to Nottingham Magistrates’ Court, put Wynter and her mother Sarah at “a serious danger of harm.”

District Judge Grace Leong claimed to be “acutely aware” that money that would typically be utilized for medical care would be diverted to pay the fine.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has only pursued two criminal cases against a maternity unit in the NHS.

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Wynter’s death from hypoxia ischemia encephalopathy, or loss of brain oxygen, could have been avoided had medical personnel delivered her sooner.

The 33-year-old Sarah Andrews was admitted to the hospital on September 14, six days after she first started having contractions, according to an inquest into her death held in 2020.

When Mrs. Andrews arrived, the maternity unit was reportedly “busy,” and during shift changes, information regarding her patient history was not appropriately passed along to other employees.

After her arrival, Mrs. Andrews was “misdiagnosed” as being in the latent phase of labor, when there were “clear clinical signs” she was in established labor, which meant she did not receive the level of care that she needed.

The inquest heard there were “missed opportunities” to move labor along and begin one-to-one care.

It also heard of missed chances to “provide additional monitoring” of the baby’s wellbeing, “and to have taken action if that monitoring had shown that baby Wynter was in distress”.

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The inquest was informed that a doctor who saw her the following morning missed the midwives’ worries about a potential infection or about Wynter’s trace examination.

The umbilical cord was “wrapped securely around her leg and neck” when Wynter was delivered at 14:05 on September 15, 2019, and attempts to revive her were given up 23 minutes later. In her parents’ embrace, she passed away.

The coroner, Laurinda Bower, said “systemic issues” contributed to the neglect of Wynter, adding the unit was so short staffed, midwives were looking after a number of high-risk patients simultaneously.

Before coming to her decision, Ms. Bower revealed that she had received an anonymous letter from the unit’s midwives, dated 10 months before to Wynter’s passing, in which they expressed their worries about staffing levels as “the source of a possible disaster” to trust managers.

Calling it a “clear and obvious case of neglect”, the coroner said: “If [Wynter] had been delivered earlier, it is likely that her death would have been avoided.”

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