Would you all be interested in knowing what happened at Guys and St Thomas Hospital to the patients and the whistleblower?
History:
We all know, this is nothing unusual in the NHS, but this is unique story. Whatever you want to know about how to 'cover up' negligence in patient care here are some tips from the Medical Director at this hospital.
1) Have you seen in any tertiary care NHS hospital, an 80-year-old patient operated without an Echocardiogram especially when he had a severe mitral and aortic regurgitation and his ejection fraction was 25 %. This patient wasn’t even admitted in ICU after Surgery as he was kept in general ward. His Echo post op showed above findings and he died.
2) Have you seen a patient was not seen by any consultant for 7 days especially when she was fighting for life in ICU and finally died. She was admitted for a benign problem for which she underwent a surgical procedure and died in the post op period. This was totally an unnecessary death.
3) Have you seen patients are being operated without the Surgeons looking at the CT scan films? Thereby missing lesions during operation and patients come back to hospital with grown up lesions when it was too late to operate.
4) Have you seen patients dying without the consultant seeing them and operating on them in time after admission? Later the patient died of aspiration.
5) Have you seen patients with huge abscess in the tummy are being kept for 2 months without being operated? Finally, when he was operated the surgeon didn't know the Anatomy of the region and the whistle blower had to help them out; otherwise they would have left the abscess in situ.
6) Have you seen hypothyroid patients are being operated without checking the thyroid status and finally it turns out the patient was hypothyroid after surgery?
Patients are lucky sometimes, inspite of all these some of them do survive and go home. These are only some of the concerns WB had raised. Only one of these patients had actually survived.
Want to know more, how did they all escape the GMC investigation for 4 years?
Chronology of Events:
The whistleblower had raised these concerns in a letter to the Head of Service on 20th July 05 with a copy to the Medical Director on 21st July 05.
He had raised concerns about the treatment of these patients earlier verbally to the Head of Service and Deputy Medical Director months ago. That caused detriment and they decided to terminate his job.
After raising these concerns in a letter, the Head of Service and the Consultant involved asked the whistleblower (WB) not to go on to the ward. They cut the WB’s salary the next day.
The WB wrote a complaint letter to the GMC attaching the complaint letter to the hospital authorities and added few more patients to that list. The Head of Service gave the termination letter to the WB against the law, as he was entitled to 3 months notice.
Please note the WB was not aware of the hospital’s ‘Whistle blowing’ policy or ‘Public Interest Disclosure Act’ (PIDA) that time.
On 2nd Aug 05, the Head of Service had instructed the service manager to collect WB’s ID badge and the bleep and she had written a mail to the Head of service that the security to be called if the WB was hanging around, as if, the WB had stolen their property. (E-mail-1).
As the WB refused to leave the hospital accommodation without an enquiry, they had conducted an enquiry on 10th August 05. That day they gave the ‘Whistle blowing’ policy to the WB. The Trust Investigating panel had told the WB that he would be reinstated if his concerns were found to be genuine. Later, the WB was surprised to read the policy as it was a genuine policy and he believed they would reinstate him, as he was 100% sure his concerns were genuine and the doctors were negligent in treating the patients.
They took 3 months to investigate WB’s concerns and finally covered up every thing and told the WB that his concerns were found to be ‘malicious’. The WB asked for a copy of the report but was refused, he asked the Chairman of the Trust Investigating panel, Ms.Maggie Hicklin to reinstate him for the 3 months notice period at least, as he refused to take 3 months pay in lieu of the notice period, but that was refused. They badly criticised the WB that his concerns were based on Indian practise. They lied in the Trust Investigating report that the Echocardiogram was done for that patient who died in the postoperative period. (Scanned document).
The Medical Director was aware of everything that was happening to the WB and the patients but didn’t try to protect either of them. In fact, he was totally involved in the ‘cover up’ of the negligence.
The WB filed a case in the employment tribunal in Oct 05. In November 05, the Medical Director sent a letter to the WB that his concerns weren't well founded. Later, in December 05 the GMC had closed WB's concerns without informing him (unlawful).
In December 05, the Home Office had lost WB's documents (? done deliberately) when he applied to renew the visa (HSMP). WB didn't get passport/visa until the end of May 06, for 6 months. WB couldn't work for 6 months during this period or go home.
The whole of year 2006 was a mess for all overseas Doctors, more so for the WB.
WB lost the case in tribunal in April 05 because the witnesses from the Hospital Trust (especially the then Deputy Medical Director, Mr.Robert c. Mason, Ms.Maggie Hicklin (Chairman of Trust investigating panel) and a consultant who was involved in the complaints) have all lied in the tribunal that the GMC had investigated and vindicated them that the tribunal, without any reservation believed.
The hospital’s Medical Director who thinks he is politically influential person orchestrated all these events.
According to Public Interest Disclosure Act, reasonable suspicion of 'cover up' is enough to satisfy Section 43B (1) (f) but in WB's case there was written evidence of 'cover up' but the case failed.
WB had never seen the Medical Director in the wards in more than a year as the Medical Director behaves like more of a politician than a Medical Doctor.
These events had happened in Colo rectal surgery firm in Guys and St Thomas Hospital and the Doctors involved are Mr.Andrew Williams and Mr.Mark George, Consultant Surgeons. These are only some of the cases WB had mentioned that happened within a period of 4 months. You can imagine how many patients would have died in these 4 1/2 years. These Doctors continue to work in this hospital, thanks to Dr.Edward Baker's dirty tricks.
The Head of Service at that time was Mr.Peter Taylor, Vascular Surgeon and the Medical Director then and now is Dr.Edward Baker. The then Deputy medical Director who was involved in this scandal was Mr.Robert c. Mason.
The GMC had investigated WB's complaints and the government is keeping the report for the past 6 months without releasing it. The leaked report suggests that WB's concerns were not only true and genuine but they were all guilty of negligence in patient care and 'cover up' of negligence and so on.
E-mail-1:
E-mail-2:
The Chairman of the Trust Investigating panel Ms.Maggie Hicklin had written to the Surgeons the WB complained about that he would be given a chance to comment on the final report before it was submitted to the Medical Director.
