Like millions of others I first heard about Sam Morrish’s tragic story on the radio on my way to work. I was humbled by the parents’ bravery in going public with their story in order to raise awareness of the problem that is sepsis.
Sepsis is caused when the body is fighting an infection, the immune system itself in trying to fight the infection overreacts and restricts the blood supply to many vital organs. Sepsis is also known as septicaemia or blood poisoning. As the article explained, 37,000 people die each year from sepsis in this country.
I hope that their sepsis awareness campaign is successful and that in the future many more people will recognise the signs of sepsis – in the same way that most people are confident that they could recognise the early onset of meningitis.
Like meningitis, early diagnosis and treatment are crucial – and as we learn from Sam Morrish’s story, it really can be a matter of life and death.
Unfortunately, doctors make mistakes like the rest of us, but sometimes with devastating consequences.
But the darker side to this story is the institutional cover-up that went on within the Hospital’s own investigation and complaints procedure, even when the parents were brave enough to ask questions about how this could have happened.
Politicians, self-interested lobby groups and the Media are all too ready to preach to us all about this “compensation culture” that we are apparently lapsing into.
Firstly, there is no compensation culture. Compensation claims derive from somebody else’s negligence which causes an innocent party injury. If you are injured by somebody else then you are entitled to compensation – therefore it is not a cultural choice – it is an entitlement.
What this story shows is the alarming and dismissive attitude which flows from this compensation culture label – being that if you have injured someone you should not admit to it in case this will tie the hands of your lawyers if and when the injured party goes to see an ambulance chaser to try and make some money out of their pain.
But this leads to an assumption by the Hospital that their job is to avoid actually saying anything of substance, padding out the complaint response but actually saying nothing that could be used against the Hospital later on in litigation.
What should happen is that if a mistake has been made then the Hospital itself should volunteer this information to the patient or their relatives and also offer an apology at that point in time. The Hospital should not do nothing and hope the client does not complain about the bad treatment. Then, even when the client is brave enough to complain, the complaint investigation should be fair and neutral and honest. A damning report by the complaint investigator may well help the patient in future litigation – but that is not the point. If future litigation is successful this is not because of the complaint department admitting too much, but rather because the Hospital were negligent in the first place.
If it is possible at all to take a positive from this story, then this must be to raise awareness of the dangers of sepsis and the need for immediate referral and treatment.
But no-one should be put off asking for explanations if they feel that they have received poor medical treatment.
