Fiona Kemp, a Principal in the Clinical Negligence department at Lees Solicitors agrees with recent concerns raised about standards of care on labour wards.
A recent newspaper article in The Leader has highlighted concerns about staff shortages on the labour wards at Wrexham Maelor Hospital - and a retired midwife is quoted as saying that she believes that such shortages are UK wide.
Two recently retired midwives have stressed that they feel that midwifery is a "profession in crisis" and that there are simply not the staff to meet government requirements that women should have one to one care during the birthing process. They emphasized both the strain upon the staff, and the risks that this poses to patients, given that labour wards are environments where snap judgements have to be made.
It does not take a great leap of imagination to conclude that such snap judgments, if made by over stretched staff, can lead to disastrous outcomes for the patients involved.
At Lees Solicitors LLP, our clinical negligence team is sadly familiar with such scenarios. We have acted for the families of children who have developed cerebral palsy or other brain injuries as a result of errors of judgment by clinical staff, and have also acted for bereaved parents who have lost children following such incidents.
The time margin between a healthy baby and one with a serious brain injury can be frighteningly small. In cases of acute starvation of blood and oxygen to the brain, irreversible brain damage can be done in little more than ten minutes. If concerns are not picked up by over stretched staff, or if in the worst case scenario, staff are not physically present with the patient at such a crisis point, the consequences can be disastrous.
Our experienced department has acted in one case where staff shortages meant that an unobserved rupture to a previous caesarean scar led to the baby being partly expelled from the womb into the mother's abdomen. No midwife was present, and nor did they respond to the emergency buzzer or calls for help for many minutes. The baby survived but now has serious brain damage, requiring constant care.
We have also acted in other complex cases where brain injuries have followed delays in performing emergency caesarean sections, failures in resuscitation procedures or even failures to ensure that babies are receiving sufficient breast milk from first time mothers. We have also worked for other families who have lost children following delays in providing antibiotics or other similar errors.
Whether such errors are the result of chronic understaffing or excessive strain on staff, is a moot point. For families who have lost a child or are caring for a brain injured child, the real question is whether the outcome could and should have been avoided.
At Lees, we have obtained substantial sums of compensation for such children and their families. We understand the devastating consequences that follow such errors, and the issues that the families face, both practically and emotionally, on a daily basis. We have many years of experience in guiding clients through the legal process and know how to minimise the strain on families who are already over burdened as a result of what has happened.
If you would like to discuss a potential enquiry with us, please call our clinical negligence department on 0800 387 927 and our specialist team will be happy to speak to you about your options. Alternatively, please email us at newclaim@lees.co.uk.
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