Jeremy Hunt has ordered a review after a junior doctor was struck off over the death of a child.
The Health and Social Care Secretary believes the General Medical Council was wrong to bar Hadiza Bawa-Garba last month.
Bawa-Garba, a trainee paediatrician, made a series of catastrophic errors while looking after six-year-old Jack Adcock, who later died of sepsis.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt (right) believes the General Medical Council was wrong to bar Hadiza Bawa-Garba (left) last month
But experts say many of the mistakes were caused by ‘systemic failures’ at her hospital, the Leicester Royal Infirmary.
Bawa-Garba had just returned from 13 months of maternity leave and was covering the roles of three doctors and looking after patients on six wards.
Midway through her shift, the hospital experienced an IT failure which meant she had to take down vital blood test results over the phone rather than seeing them on the screen.
The case has provoked outcry among doctors who are worried about reporting their own mistakes for fear of suffering the same fate.
Mr Hunt yesterday said he had ordered an urgent review of how doctors are disciplined by the GMC after patients die due to their mistakes.
This will look specifically at Bawa-Garba’s case and establish whether the GMC needs to learn any lessons.
Mr Hunt is worried about the implications of the case for patient safety. If doctors stop owning up to their mistakes, he is concerned lessons will not be learned by the hospital to ensure the same errors are not repeated.
Bawa-Garba (right), a trainee paediatrician, made a series of catastrophic errors while looking after six-year-old Jack Adcock (left), who later died of sepsis
Announcing the review in the Commons yesterday, he said: ‘The only way we can reduce mistakes in the NHS is to learn from every single one, and the tragic case of Dr Bawa-Garba raises many important questions about how the health system supports staff to be open and transparent when things go wrong.
‘Today I’ve launched a wide-ranging review to look at the issues raised by this case: nothing matters more than patient safety, and we need to restore doctors’ confidence to speak out on behalf of their patients.’
The review will be led by Professor Sir Norman Williams, former president of the Royal College of Surgeons.
Jack Adcock died on February 18, 2011, only 11 hours after he had been admitted to hospital.
Initially, Bawa-Garba was given a 12-month suspension by an independent panel, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, in a ruling in June.
But the GMC went to the High Court to overturn this ruling and Bawa-Garba was struck off on January 25.
She plans to appeal against this decision and more than £300,000 has been raised by the public to fund her legal costs.