A doctor who was struck off for blunders which resulted in the death of a six-year-old boy should be back treating sick children, the Court of Appeal heard today.
Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba, 41, was on duty at Leicester Royal Infirmary 2011 when Jack Adcock, from Glen Parva, Leicestershire, went into cardiac arrest due to sepsis.
She made the ‘remarkable error’ of mistakenly placing Jack under a ‘do not resuscitate’ order after confusing him with a two-year-old who had been discharged.
The doctor was later convicted of gross negligence manslaughter and received a suspended two-year jail sentence in November 2015.
Hadiza Bawa-Garba outside the High Court in London, where she is appealing the ruling that she should be struck off following her conviction of gross negligence manslaughter over the death of six-year-old boy Jack Adcock
Nicola (commonly known as Nicky) Adcock the mother of six-year-old Jack Adcock, from Glen Parva, Leicestershire, who had Down’s Syndrome and a known heart condition and who died at Leicester Royal Infirmary in 2011, walks to High Court in London
Jack Adcock, six, (pictured) went into cardiac arrest after being admitted to the hospital and died of sepsis the same day
The prosecution said Jack died after a series of failings by medical staff, including Dr Bawa-Garba’s ‘failure to discharge her duty’ as the responsible doctor.
She had originally diagnosed the boy which gastro-enteritis, a stomach bug.
The doctor failed to spot from blood tests that Jack was in shock or reviewed chest x-rays that indicated he had the chest infection.
Dr Bawa-Garba, a junior doctor specialising in paediatrics at the time, was struck off earlier this year following a successful appeal by the General Medical Council (GMC) against a decision of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal (MPT) to suspend her for 12 months.
She is now challenging the ruling that she should be struck off in front of three Court of Appeal judges.
At the Court of Appeal on Wednesday, Dr Bawa-Garba’s counsel James Laddie QC told the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, Master of the Rolls Sir Terence Etherton and Lady Justice Rafferty that in the 70th anniversary year of the founding of the NHS, the case had turned out to be ‘something of a lightning rod for the dissatisfaction of doctors and medical staff in this country’.
Hadiza Bawa-Garba (front right) and her supporters and legal team stand outside the High Court in London
He added: ‘They are baffled and angered by an outcome which has left the NHS deprived of the services of a young and talented paediatrician who suffers from no character flaw rendering her unsuitable to practise medicine and who, it is agreed, poses no risk to patient safety.’
He said there is particular concern at the decision to disregard ‘systemic failings’ which contributed to the environment in which Dr Bawa-Garba came to make the mistakes which led to court.
Dr Bawa-Garba and Jack’s family listened in court as Mr Laddie said his mother Nicola had told an interviewer the vocal support for the doctor had caused people to forget she and her husband had lost their son.
‘We have not forgotten. Our client – a mother herself – has not forgotten and she will bear the guilt, the memory and the stain for the rest of her life,’ he said.
Paying tribute to their ‘articulate and impassioned’ campaign, he said it is apparent their grief is ‘hardly less raw’ now than seven years ago.
‘Our arguments are not intended to diminish their sense of loss, but we submit in this sensitive area that public confidence in the medical profession demands, or at least permits, a sanction other than erasure to be applied.’
The MPT’s (Medical Practitioners Tribunal) decision was ‘humane and balanced’, he added.
Nicola Adcock outside the High Court today. She told an interviewer the vocal support for the doctor had caused people to forget she and her husband had lost their son
‘If it had been allowed to stand, Dr Bawa-Garba would have in all probability spent today and tomorrow treating sick and injured children in an East Midlands hospital ward, and we say that is where she should be and not sitting in this court room.’
Urging that the appeal should be allowed, Mr Laddie said: ‘The MPT concluded that suspension was an appropriate sanction which was necessary in the public interest.
‘That conclusion was within its margin of judgment and was rational. Indeed the MPT’s conclusion was correct.
‘The ordinary intelligent citizen recognises that NHS doctors work under intense pressure in environments where systems are less than perfect and where one-off mistakes may have tragic consequences.
‘The same citizen recognises that to err is human and that public confidence places a greater value on remediation and redemption than on retribution.’
In written argument before the court, Ivan Hare QC for the GMC, said the appeal should be dismissed because the High Court was correct to decide that the MPT failed to apply the relevant rule of the GMC (Fitness to Practise) Rules Order of Council 2004 and undermined the rationale for making criminal convictions conclusive evidence of the offence committed in disciplinary cases.
The High Court plainly had regard to the individual circumstances of the case and its reasoning was straightforward and correct, he said.
‘The MPT undermined the 2004 Rules and the jury’s verdict by reaching its own conclusion on Dr Bawa-Garba’s individual culpability by reference to systemic failings and the failings of others.’
The hearing is expected to last a day-and-a-half with judgment reserved.
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