Hospital made ‘a number of failures’ in treatment before death of girl, 6
A coroner has said a hospital made ‘a number of failures’ in the care of a six-year-old girl who died – but stopped short of saying it directly caused or contributed to her death.
Maya Siek died at Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital (QEQM) in Margate, Kent, in December 2022. She’d been sent home with antibiotics for suspected tonsillitis two days earlier.
The inquest into her death concluded today and coroner Catherine Wood found there were a series of issues which ‘could have been done differently’ by East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, who run the hospital.
These include failing to keep Maya in hospital overnight when she was first brought in two days before her death, and not informing all treatment team members about her sepsis diagnosis the next day.
Ms Wood said: ‘There were a number of failures at the trust in relation to Maya’s management.
‘Generally, her condition didn’t appear to have been escalated as it should have been.’
Maya’s mum, Magda Wisniewska, took her to A&E on December 19, 2022, after she’d collapsed.
Doctors thought she might have tonsillitis and discharged her, but she collapsed again on her way out of the department.
Following an ECG and blood tests Maya was sent home again, with her mum told to bring her back in if she deteriorated.
Maya was brought back the following day after she had ‘gone downhill’ overnight, at which point she was diagnosed with sepsis and tests also showed influenza.
However, nurses failed to document any real admission notes on December 20 about the diagnosis. There was also a failure to discuss sepsis guidelines with Ms Wisniewska and Maya’s father, Rajratan Bande, the inquest heard.
Maya had been suffering with a persistently high heart rate throughout her time in hospital. Doctors at Great Ormand Street revealed she also had other ‘chronic conditions’, namely problems with a fatty liver related to obesity and a thickened heart wall.
Ms Wood also identified the trust’s failure to adequately monitor Maya’s vital signs during her admission to the hospital’s Rainbow Ward, and a failure to contact South Thames Retrieval Service for support.
Maya was given a dose of high-strength sodium chloride given around 2am on December 21, but plans made for blood scans later that morning were not carried out.
She went into cardiac arrest later that day and despite resuscitation efforts, she died.
The coroner accepted the cause of death as heart failure (acute myocardial necrosis), alongside the presence of Maya’s other chronic conditions and influenza.
Ms Wood said that ‘despite the plethora of evidence that we’ve heard, we still don’t really have the full answers’, and added she was unsure if any earlier treatment by the trust ‘could or would have made a difference’.
Ms Wisniewska said she has been ‘completely let down’ by the hospital she had trusted to take care of Maya, adding: ‘The trust did not fully appreciate what was wrong with her and there were errors in treatment which meant it was incomplete.
‘Our life has been ruined and our family will never be the same without her.’
Mr Bande told reporters he felt ‘disappointed’ and urged medical professionals to ‘listen to the parents’, but added that the coroner had done ‘a great job’.
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