Leicester doctor guilty of manslaughter of Jack Adcock, 6
A doctor has been found guilty of the manslaughter of a six-year-old boy who was "seriously neglected" in hospital. Jack Adcock died of a cardiac arrest at Leicester Royal Infirmary in February 2011.
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Hadiza Bawa-Garba was found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence. Sister Theresa Taylor was cleared of the same charge. Agency nurse Isabel Amaro, 47, was found guilty of the same charge on Monday.
Jack, who had Down's syndrome and a heart condition, was admitted to the hospital with vomiting and diarrhoea. Jack Adcock died in February 2011 from a cardiac arrest after sepsis was triggered by a bacterial infection but he died 11 hours later from a cardiac arrest caused by sepsis triggered by pneumonia.
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The trial heard the boy's death was caused by "serious neglect" by staff who failed to recognise his body was "shutting down" and close to death, the prosecution claimed.
At one point, Bawa-Garba, 38, mistook Jack for another patient who had a do not resuscitate order.
Jack's mother Nicola Adcock said her son was a lively and energetic boy. The paediatric specialist only resumed treatment when a junior doctor pointed out the error, although the prosecution accepted Jack had already been "past the point of no return".
Bawa-Garba said in her defence she had worked a 12-hour shift with no break and there was a lot of miscommunication in the ward. Amaro accepted she had breached her duty of care but denied that any of her failings significantly contributed to the youngster's death.
After a month-long trial at Nottingham Crown Court, the jury retired on Thursday last week to consider its verdicts, returning a guilty verdict on Amaro on Monday.The trial at Nottingham Crown Court lasted for a month followed by five days of jury deliberations
Jack's parents Nicola and Victor Adcock were at court for much of the trial. Mrs Adcock described their son as lively and energetic.
"You take your child to the hospital expecting you are doing the right thing. "I wish I had never taken him there that day," she told the BBC. "They neglected him from the minute he went into that ward."
In a statement released after the verdict, Andrew Furlong, interim medical director at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, said: "We cannot bring Jack back and under the circumstances saying sorry does not seem enough.
"Nevertheless, we are deeply sorry and would like to again send our condolences to the Adcock family." He said that since his death, improvements had been made to the hospital's working practices.