To be utterly gobsmacked at the gross negligence regarding this poor pregnant woman?

[WorraLiberty]

Don't click if you're easily upset

OK I know I'm not BU to be gobsmacked...but AIBU to think it shouldn't take a tragedy like this, to make the hospital realise trainee surgeons shouldn't be working alone?

Even as a trainee hairdresser, I had to have a qualified hairdresser watching over me just to cut hair...and yet they were allowed to operate?

The online edition doesn't mention that she leaves behind 3 DCs and a disabled DH. She was the breadwinner and main carer of them all

Is this normal practice do you think?

Well reading between the lines I think they mean it was a registrar and either a second registrar or possibly an sho doing the op. the paper talks about "trainee surgeon" in absence of a consultant.

Technically they're correct as registrars are still taking exams, etc. but it doesn't mean that they're a student.

Where I work registrar level Drs routinely operate on people with o consultant in theatre. In obs and gynae they will do operations at weekends and nights without a consultant in the hospital!

Yes, it is normal practice.

Although arguably not in cases that are complex, such as this one. I'm not a general surgeon though so that's just my impression.

But as I said in my previous post, most MN babies born by C section or ventouse/forceps will have been delivered by "trainees".

I do think the nomenclature is confusing for the general public. It's a bit like calling all teachers trainee teachers because they aren't yet a head teacher.

The papers can print this, because the hospital can't defend them self. 1) because of patient confident 2) because their solicitor has told them.

I send my love to the family at this heart breaking time.

The poor woman and her poor family. speechless.

I'm not sure there is a defence against this level of incompetence is there?

If there is, I'd love to hear it.

Well noone on this thread has any idea what really happened, unless they were involved directly, and as a pp said the hospital can only put out a generic statement rather than release any specifics, due to patient confidentiality.

As why said, it's not always quite as straightforward as oh that's obviously an ovary and that's an appendix...

I wouldn't presume to judge how well other people in other fields I am not a specialist in do or don't do their jobs based solely on a newspaper article.

Some one in the hospital is to blame, I agree.

It could be poorly written notes, poor communication, poor after care and other reasons at the top my head.

It is such a tragic case and I hope the family will get the answers they need.

Yes it's normal for registars such as me to do appendicectomies with an SHO (junior surgical trainee assisting and no consultant present. A registrar is a qualified surgeon who is not a consultant yet . I like the qualified teacher who is not head teacher analagy. If a patient was in early pregnancy it would be fairly common for a senior reg (almost consultant) to be unsupervised, however in second or third trimester, it would be common for a consultant to be present and in my experience no junior registrars operate unsupervised on a pregnant patient unsupervised. At the moment senior obstetric registrars do most emergency c sections alone but perhaps this practice will be revised as we move to consultant delivered care.

olympics Despite all the hysteria I doubt the general public will actually want to pay what is necessary to have Consultants to be resident 24/7 to do SHO level LSCSs tbh. The RCOG are certainly keen on it but I've yet to see it implemented in a new Consultant job plan. We shall see.

Btw ST3+s in O&G do "unsupervised" CSs everywhere I've worked (not just SR equivalents).

The hospital has actually admitted liability in this case, so it must be pretty clear cut negligence.

Tragic events like this are seldom the result of one isolated mistake. There will probably have been a series of errors made which sadly added up to this woman dying. Surgeons, even consultants, are not infallible, and we just don't know what went on in that operating theatre, or indeed what else was going on at the time. They may have been on duty for a very long time, were tired, had a terrible shift etc etc. Anatomy can vary between people and it's easy for people to sneer that it's easy to tell the difference between an ovary and appendix when they weren't there. The article linked to mentions that the histopathology results, which showed that the ovary had been removed, were not acted upon. It's easy to blame the surgeons involved, but chances are the mistake they made was not as stupid and obvious as people are making out.

I have had a c section ,gall bladder removed and an eye operation and all were done by consultants.I don't know how I'd feel about someone else doing the op

'the hospital can't defend them self.'

but what possible defence can there be to removing the wrong organ.There are only 2 parties involved- hospital and patient and it certanly can't be the patient's fault

xylem hooray for you. I assume that you are paying for your care? And that you assume Consultants grow on trees, fully trained?

Personally I'd rather a senior Reg operate on me than lots of senior Consultants. They are often at their peak in terms of skill, dexterity, speed etc just because of the sheer amount of operating they do.

xylem hooray for you
?? weird reply.Are you always so aggressive?

Poor woman, time we did something about it all. Let's wake up!, our hospitals are cesspits, not fit for purpose! .

I can't make sense of this.

It's possible the surgeons thought they were supposed to remove the ovary. If I was a surgeon and I was asked to remove the ovary of a pregnant woman I'd have had some questions to ask beforehand.

It's possible the surgeons removed the ovary in error thinking it was an appendix. I'm a vet and we perform surgery on the reproductive organs and the gastrointestinal tract regularly and I cannot understand how these two organs can possibly be confused. The artery supplying an ovary is enormous even outside of pregnancy, and even in cases of severe inflammation or damage to the gut there's no way you could confused the two. Access and visualisation is very difficult but really there is no excuse.

It's not really a trainee surgeon issue though, it's just a huge catastrophic bollocks up issue. Poor poor woman and her family :(