NHS Trust Investigation Reveals 300 Babies Left Brain Damaged or Died due to Avoidable

The hospital under scrutiny is the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital which is one of the sites run by Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust after there have been allegations of poor maternity care and baby deaths at the facility.

According to reports, 300 babies died or were left brain damaged due to unnecessary mistakes at NHS hospital trust.

The Sunday Times has also reported that the conclusion of the five-year investigation into the experience of 1,500 families will show how mothers were denied caesarean births and forced to suffer traumatic births.

Particularly between 2000 and 2019, about 1,800 complaints were made which prompted the inquiry into baby deaths and allegations of poor maternity care at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. The investigation is led by Donna Ockenden, senior midwifery adviser to the chief executive of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), and assisted by a team of 90 expert midwives and doctors.

According to the newspaper, the report will show that at least 12 mothers died during childbirth and some families lost more than one child. The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust has said that it took full responsibility for the failings and has paid out over £58m in medical negligence damages and costs since 2000.

This report which is regarded as the worst maternity scandal in NHS history highlights the repeated failure of the trust to learn from past incidents.

• UK’s ‘worst’ maternity scandal: ‘I begged for a C-section but the medics said no and I lost my precious boy’
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Due to an alleged fixed quota for normal births, women were denied caesarean sections as the hospital prioritized hitting targets over patient’s safety.

Ahead of the publication of the report, Ms Ockenden told the Sunday Times that families had been “silenced or ignored.” She also added that the system had many opportunities to wake up and correct the problem. She further said “We have seen families that have been split apart, families where relationships have been broken, cases of trauma and PTSD that have persisted for years after the event as well as terrible, terrible sadness. At times, after meeting families, I went back to my hotel room and I cried.”

An interim report had been published in December 2020, and it underlined an array of failures by the trust, which included failing to properly listen to patients. The review also said that the maternity staff had caused distress to patients by using “inappropriate language” and even going as far as blaming grieving mothers for their loss.

A spokeswoman for the team involved in the final report declined making any comment prior to publishing the report which is due on Wednesday.

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