What happened?

Navdeep Kainth, specialist medical negligence solicitor, at Moosa-Duke Solicitors represented a client who was a first time mum after she tragically lost her baby.

A week before her due date, on Monday, our client felt her waters break. Her clothing was wet, so she changed her clothes and wore a pad. She and her husband called the Maternity Assessment Unit (“MAU”) for advice and were told to attend Leicester General Hospital.

After she arrived, she was seen by a midwife and a student midwife. They inspected the pad, which was dry and said that her waters had not broken. Our client explained that she changed the pad at home, but they did not listen to her.  They did not do any tests to check if her waters had broken and told her to go home and return only once her contractions were every 3 – 4 minutes (they were every 10 – 15 minutes at that time) and when her waters had broken.

The following day, she felt the urge to push and had blood and sticky discharge on her pad. She started vomiting and was unable to pass urine or open her bowels. The couple called MAU for advice but were told to stay at home until the contractions were more frequent.

Her symptoms were the same the next day (Wednesday), so the couple called MAU again. They were told that her fluid intake should be increased and that they should stay at home.

On Thursday, our client’s symptoms continued. She had a pre-arranged appointment at home with a community practitioner, who advised her to see a GP as soon as possible.

Our client made an appointment and was seen the same day by a GP at her surgery.  She was not referred to hospital and advised to drink plenty of fluids and take some medication.

Over the course of the next 2 days, her symptoms did not improve.

In the early hours of Saturday, she began vomiting black vomit with a foul smell. She attended a walk-in centre and was advised to go to the hospital straight away.  When she arrived at Leicester General Hospital, it was found that her bladder was distended; the hospital doctors could not find the baby’s heart beat or movement and our client was informed that her baby had sadly died. Our client had to give birth to her baby who was stillborn.

Our client suffered permanent bladder problems, including incontinence, urine urgency, an injury to her perineum and a psychiatric injury as a result of the delay in delivering her baby.

Our client instructed us as she wanted to seek answers about what had happened to her and her baby.  She wanted the hospital trust to learn from what happened to her so that no more families would have to experience the loss of their baby.

Investigation by Moosa-Duke Solicitors

We investigated the care provided to our client and obtained expert evidence, which confirmed that when she had attended the hospital on the first occasion, the midwives should have performed a simple test (which was in line with the hospital’s own policy) to have assessed whether her waters had broken. The midwives should also have re-checked our client’s pad after 1 to 2 hours. These failures were negligent.

If the test had been performed, it would have confirmed that our client’s waters had broken and it is likely that induction of labour would have started within 24 hours. Our client’s baby would have been born alive and healthy.

Preventing future negligence – Lessons Learned

A Letter of Claim was sent to the hospital trust and it set out the allegations of negligence. The hospital admitted that the negligent failures had caused the death of our client’s baby and her permanent injuries.

University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust confirmed that it had taken what had happened to our client very seriously and would review its procedures so that it could learn from the case and reduce the risk of this happening to any other patient. Our client received an apology from the trust for the negligent care provided.

We are saddened to see that since this case, the Care Quality Commission has published a report into the Leicester maternity services and the overall rating for the trust has been downgraded to “requires improvement”.

Moosa-Duke Solicitors are a team of specialist clinical negligence solicitors who have experience in dealing with maternity and baby loss cases and represent a number of families who have been affected by baby loss.

Click here to read our article about the Leicester maternity services and here to read about one of the familes we are helping.

Please call us for a no-obligation discussion on 0116 2547456 or send us an email at enquiries@moosaduke.com. We may be able to help you too.