Today has seen the publication of the report by Professor Sir Ian Kennedy about the review into breast care services at the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust and in particular the role of Mr Ian Paterson, a breast surgeon who worked at the hospital.
This is something about which we have reported many times in the past.
The review is damming of the Trust, its former management and of Mr Paterson personally.
It highlights missed opportunities in 2003 and 2007 to stop Mr Paterson from what he was doing, which at its most fundamental level was to put at risk women who had already suffered from breast cancer.
To quote from a section of the Executive Summary of the full report, Sir Ian Kennedy says:
“It is a story of women faced with a life threatening disease who have been harmed. It is a story of clinicians at their wits’ ends trying for years to get the Trust to address what was going on. It is a story of clinicians going along with what they knew to be poor performance. It is a story of weak and indecisive leadership from senior managers. It is a story of secrecy and containment. It is a story of a Board which did not carry out its responsibilities. It is a story of a surgeon who chose on occasions to operate on women in a way unrecognised by his peers and thereby exposed them to harm.”
The website on which the full report is published can be found here.
Waldrons Solicitors Blog 