Doctor 'failed three times to spot baby's swine flu'

A girl aged 12 months has become one of the youngest people in the country to contract swine flu.

Jessica Davies was diagnosed with the virus only after being taken three times to a GP, say her parents. A hospital doctor spotted that Jessica had the illness and she was prescribed the Tamiflu drug, according to Athol and Lindsay Davies.

‘I would like to warn other parents to keep going back to their doctors if they think their child has swine flu,’ said Mrs Davies, from Hartlepool, ‘If it wasn’t for a doctor at the hospital suggesting Jessica was tested then she wouldn’t have been diagnosed. To me, that is very worrying.’

Source: The Metro.

'Rest break' death ambulance technician keeps job

An ambulance technician who chose not to respond to what proved to be a fatal heart attack when he was on a tea break has been told he can keep his job.

The technician was 800 yards away when 33-year-old Mandy Mathieson had a cardiac arrest in Tomintoul, Moray.

However, the call was instead answered by paramedics based 15 miles away in Grantown-on-Spey.

Source: BBC

Mothers giving birth at night are being put at risk because of poor staffing at NHS hospitals

Dr Tony Falconer, the new president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), claimed many inexperienced doctors working night shift on labour wards lacked necessary skills to ensure a safe child delivery.

Dr Falconer, a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust, said medical staff often undertook unnecessary caesarean sections on women, leading to some babies suffering catastrophic harm during their birth.

A disproportionate numbers of NHS payouts over alleged medical negligence in childbirth involve babies born overnight, he said.

Trainee doctors working overnight were sometimes too slow to realise that a new mother was still bleeding after a caesarean or to spot post-operative complications.

Other staff who train during the night, such as obstetricians and anaesthetists, are also less experienced than teams working during the day, with many junior obstetric doctors lacking technical skills to use forceps or vacuum to ease a baby's birth, he added.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

Well, I Can't See THIS Going Wrong, Can You..?

An NHS efficiency drive may result in hospital appointments being outsourced to call centres in India.

Not when it's worked so well and proven so stunningly popular with customers in all other industries!

I mean, it's not as if anything bad has ever happened befo...

Oh:

The proposal comes despite a scandal two years ago when the confidential medical records of patients at one of London’s top private hospitals were sold on by Indian IT staff.

/facepalm