Power, irony and the ‘sorry’ ship…

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‘Sorry’ or an absence of sorry has been a consistent feature of the last few years. We’ve collected a right old rag bag of non-apologies including ‘I’m sorry for any distress you may have felt…’ ‘Please accept my condolences for your loss‘ and ‘I’m sorry if [fill in whatever here]. Last week Valerie Murphy finally ‘found remorse’ and produced an apology for the MPTS panel.

The Murpy effect

At LB’s inquest, one of the barristers, Mr Fortune, offered Murphy the opportunity to say sorry to us when she was giving evidence. An eminently sensible and kind man, he’d obviously helped his client Winnie Betsva come to the decision to do so when she earlier gave evidence. Winnie said sorry. Clearly and unambiguously. Murphy’s non-response lead Fortune to dramatically say “I specifically did not ask we, I addressed the question to you. Dr Murphy please answer.” After further procrastination she stated “It was the right decision. I don’t believe there were failings”. On the inquest recording you can hear the courtroom door slam as I walked out. [I didn’t slam it, it closes loudly.]

Fast forward to yesterday and an email from the GMC. Murphy’s solicitor said she wants to write to us and are we willing to allow the GMC to pass on our home address.

When the ‘sorry’ ship has sailed…

There comes a time when the space to say sorry expires. How long that window remains open will vary but given we went into the MPTS tribunal last August fully expecting and prepared to accept an apology from Murphy four years after LB died it lasts some time.

That ship has sailed now. It sailed for me when instead of saying sorry she allowed her barrister to unnecessarily cross-examine me for nearly two hours.

I had to leave that room too when he told me she was upset. For a brief break before returning to more of the same. While Murphy sat next to him. Feet away.

I’d hazard a guess that Murphy wants to apologise to us now because this absence is repeatedly referred to in the sanction decision. The focus of the MPTS process is on finding demonstrations of insight and remorse by the doctor and the panel helpfully suggest what she might produce before the hearing next year. Including

A reflective account addressing what you have learned and done in respect of the Tribunal’s findings of facts, impairment and sanction demonstrating your level of insight;

[As a bit of an aside, in my thoughts about this I had a sad chuckle earlier remembering LB’s approach to unwanted stuff like hex bugs, broken watches, the egg of trust. He just binned em. Without hesitation.]

The panel should have drawn a dotted line under a potential apology at this stage. It really doesn’t take much insight or reflection to realise that it is probably too late. There’s heavy irony here that the panel are prepared to drag an apology out of Murphy in pursuit of evidence of insight without themselves showing any insight or reflection of the continuing brutality of the process for us. Murphy, likewise, is demonstrating no insight into her actions if she’s prepared to suddenly fashion an apology after everything she’s done and hasn’t done.

Final thoughts

Power is, as always, at the heart of this sorry business. The power to withhold a genuine sorry or to give a half baked non-apology. The power to choose to send ‘the sorry’ a circuitous route to the recipient or simply to others. The power to give a medic – who catastrophically failed a patient by not providing the most basic of basic medical care – chance after chance to buck her ideas up. The erasure of any consideration of the impact of the whole process – including actions taken and decisions made – on the family and wider.

This is an extract from one of the responses sent to the Professional Standards Association expressing concerns about the panel sanction decision.

The Equality Act requires public sector agencies to make reasonable adjustments such that the service offers a similar standard to groups such as disabled people to that experienced by other people. Using learning difficulties as a mitigating factor points in a direction contrary to the Equality Act, seeming to accept that standards are lower for medical professionals working with people with learning disabilities.

I can’t help thinking the MPTS process has descended into some kind of farce. Underpinned by an inability to see LB as a person, demonstrated by using ‘learning difficulties as a mitigating factor’.  It’s the only way I can make any (non)sense of it.

[As a postscript, as I’m struggling to make sense of this, if anyone has any different thoughts please chip in below.]

Constructing remorse…

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I’m not sure where I’m at right now. An odd mix of physical and emotional pain, despair, rage, intensity, incredulity, powerlessness. A heady mix of summat there’s no name for. Four years on from referring Valerie Murphy to the GMC. Seven months since her tribunal started in August 2017. My cross-examination during that first hearing. The drawing out of this process across two weekends in November and three days this week. Being battered with further evidence, excuses and shite.

A slow and inexorable torture.

Enter ‘remorse’

Remorse arrived in Manchester this week. Late in the day but Murphy’s barrister explained ‘the blessing’ of insight can take time for some doctors. [Yes really.]

George Julian carefully traced the crystallisation of this remorse over 4.5 years.

Short version here:

A remorse drenched reflective statement signed days before the hearing was shared with the panel.

Murphy even pitched up with a new version of the yellow card story. An exemplar in how ‘facts’ can be retrospectively squeezed into newly discovered remorse spaces. Bit of a fakery giveaway here with her aim ‘from’ rather than ‘of’ this project:

Someone has to drive this through she told the panel between sniffles, ‘a bad headache’ and having been apparently “emotionally broken” by these events.

The yellow card narrative. A redemption song.

Sense and sensibility

Stepping back, it’s obviously not possible to raise awareness of your own failings until you recognise you’ve failed. Given this recognition only happened in the last week or so it’s unlikely Murphy has been openly talking about her failings while spreading the news about the yellow card. [While off work sick].

Anyone calmly sitting next to their barrister tearing strips off a mother whose son died under their care is not ‘open about their personal failings’.

The panel must know this. They were there. They’ve read the mountain of documentation which includes shifting the blame to anyone or anything that moves.

Followers of the live twitter feed collectively groaned on Monday morning when after light questioning it transpired that the pioneering yellow card team of four had never met. A slow collapsing into vague reference to a chance meeting with one of the team at a conference back in 2014/5 and, the ultimate farce, regular meetings with the second who happens to be Murphy’s husband.

George live tweeting the proceeding was pulled up for ‘audible expression’.

The absurdity of the evidence presented on Monday and the subsequent acceptance of the panel to swallow this was more than apparent to those following.

The decision

The decision was published mid afternoon on Wednesday. 12 months suspension and another review. The sanction document (I’ve only managed to read up to page 8 so far) captures so much horror it’s difficult to understand the decision. Or this process really.IMG_3513

And then. Under mitigating circumstances on p7. This.

‘The difficult field of adult learning difficulties.’

It was the ‘difficult field of learning difficulties’ what did it for LB [for Danny Tozer, Edward Hartley, Thomas Rawnsley, Stephanie Binchcliffe, Anthony Dawson, Sarah Burnley… and so many others].

‘Difficult’ which, in this context, means less than. Less than human. Entitled to less than care in shoddy, substandard surroundings. Murphy was never going to be struck off for a less than death. She might have done nothing remotely resembling being a doctor but she only had to whip out a bit of made up remorse and a shabby incoherent story at the 11th hour to avoid erasure.

This damning statement by the panel effectively endorses the idea that certain people can expect to be treated appallingly. Utterly, utterly shameful.

Taking Mildred, Murphy and North Parade

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Rich and I walked down to North Parade yesterday so I could stock up on wool to help me get through the final section of the GMC tribunal. A process started in May 2014 when we referred LB’s responsible clinician to the GMC. The tribunal has spread out across two weeks in August, two weekends in November and a further three days from this Monday. 

The consultant, Valerie Murphy, relinquished her licence in 2014 and returned to work in Ireland. When we referred her we knew nothing about the patient who died seven years before LB in the same bath. A death she raised with the Trust in March 2014 and then 18 months later at LB’s inquest. A death dismissed in life.  Another layer of grim wrongness discarded as easily as a dirty wrapper in a street bin.

I already feel queasy that the sanction will be decided this week. The impairment decision makes for a devastating read and the process has been brutal. George Julian is back in Manchester tonight ready for the 9.30am start. She will be live-tweeting the proceedings at @JusticeforLBGMC shedding light on these processes (and allowing us to follow from home).

We walked down Cuckoo Lane. Passed the John Radcliffe hospital where LB didn’t die. The Oxford Brookes University nursery where he went as a tot (before being ‘released’ with a ‘too difficult for us’ stamp). Across the Marston Ferry Road and along the river to University Parks. Roaming around various North Oxford roads until we emerged opposite North Parade.

The small wool shop (Oxford Yarn Store) for a novice but seriously hooked crocheter was dazzling. Like a cave of brilliant jewels arranged and heaped on every surface, from floor to ceiling.The woman was reassuringly helpful showing me what wool I should use and a photo of the end result if I used the wool I liked. I suspect I’ll be a long term spiky novice on the stitching front (I have history here) but she was quietly encouraging.

After some careful questions about my recent turn to crocheting she said she was following what happened to LB and her nephew was autistic. She wished me luck and looked sad.

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Over on twitter (which constitutes about 15% of my current non-working life if I include the early hours of the morning) reverberations about Hadiza Bawa-Garba continue.  This is the doctor recently struck off by the GMC. I relentlessly stand on my timeline with a faulty light sabre (alongside a number of other family members, lay people and the rare medic) hitting back at what seem to be outlandish, extreme and inappropriate claims by hopefully a vocal minority of medics (though given the shedload of cash raised overnight to challenge the GMC decision I’m not sure). 

I don’t have any personal feelings about Bawa-Garba being struck off. I’ve consistently said that a legal process has been followed to the max and until further details of the original manslaughter trial are known there’s little point in speculating about ‘scapegoating’ or miscarriages of justice. I worry that Jack’s Down’s syndrome was a feature simply because of the dire mortality figures around learning disabled people. Certain people receive differing care across health and social care settings.

The tone of the challenge by the medical profession is grim; little or no consideration of Jack and his family (or worse), exclamation marks, unsavoury and sometimes inconsistent comments.  There has also been condemnation of dissenters to the ‘We are all Hadiza” calls. Among other things this week I was called Mildred from Three Billboards.  ‘A woman past caring’ said the medic dismissively erasing the intense love, complexity, humour and strength of McDormand’s character. I’ll take that, I thought. I’ll bloody take Mildred.

And hope the right decision is made this week.

The fish tank, gotes and dressing up

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An old mate Jill called round unexpectedly this afternoon while I was crocheting in the back room. I’m getting not too bad at crocheting squares with wobbly sides.

We had a bit of a reminisce over a cuppa and hob nob or two. The time we first met. About 20 years ago when Rosie, and Jill’s son Tristan, started at primary school together. Jill and I randomly sat on a wooden bench by the fish tank in the foyer so absorbed in chatting we missed the talk the headteacher was giving to new parents in the school hall. We laughed (in part horror) when they filed out passed us.

Failing our first ever school-related parental task.

The headteacher explained in the talk we missed that the bench by the fish tank was where kids would wait when no one turned up to collect them at the end of the day. The cone of shame bench. Rosie was to sit there a few times over the next four or five years. After what now seem like capers in the overly complicated and convoluted world of family life when a child is labelled as disabled.

ConnorWe remembered how Tristan became a regular fixture at ours after school typically wearing his Thunderbirds outfit. Virgil. Captain Tracey… The outfits.

I’d forgotten about the outfits. LB was a sucker for dressing up. Captain Scarlett, Woody from Toy Story, a racing driver, the Early Learning Centre policeman tabard. Batman to Tom’s handed down Spiderman.

Washing up gloves, school shoes and wobbly masks. The full gear.

Jill’s younger son Will became one of Tom’s bezzy mates. He was with us on the visit to the rare breeds farm when LB let the goats out.  I still chuckle when I remember being in that tiny space with LB and those cheeky goats. I recently found his school holiday diary where he’d written:

‘I let the gotes out’.

You did matey. And I should have seen it happening.

We didn’t half laugh though. That memory is priceless.

 

 

 

 

Under giant trees…

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I don’t blog much any more. I’m off work. I don’t have the concentration to do much more than play candycrush, sort through stuff and graze social media. I’ve become a half arsed, flakey version of a Stepford Wife. Rich gritting his teeth when I brightly suggest that if we wipe the top of the cooker daily it will remain clean.

My days are strangely unfilled with little and so much. 

I listen to this, over and over again.

Haunting and magical particularly from 3.16.

Richard Handley’s inquest has been live tweeted this week (@Handleyinquest). A cheeky chappy surrounded by love and a family effectively excluded from the work sadly needed to keep him alive. A tale of barbaric and inhumane failings.

The overlap with Connor’s inquest is harrowing. Blame shifting, lies and an absence of remorse. Richard’s mother brutally and unnecessarily questioned at length.

I bought a bag of wool and crochet hooks. I need to learn to hold, hook, turn and gently pull through wool though woollen hoops and loops. I’m watching a ‘crochet for beginners (left handed)’ youtube film. It takes practice apparently but the basics are clear:

“Move your crochet hook under and over the yarn, and then pull it through.”

I do this. Listening to Under giant trees.

‘Always make sure patients with epilepsy are within sight or sound when bathing.’

‘Make sure Richard has a healthy diet (plenty of fibre) and monitor bowel movements…’

Under, over and through.

Clear and simple instructions.

Giant trees. 3.16 is the best bit.

Long lines…

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I’ve been off work since November with ‘mixed depression and anxiety complicated by grief and trauma’. The thoughtful and consistent support I’ve received has involved focusing on doing very little in order to regroup and recover before the General Medical Council (GMC) decision on the fitness to practice of LB’s responsible clinician (Feb) and the judgement in the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecution of Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust (March). 

Doing very little has been a revelation. After early days of intense agitation and wondering ‘What the actual fuck…?’ I’m getting good at it. I can wash a pan or sort out a small pile of crap (untouched since 2013) with unprecedented attention and a (non) speed that would beat the slowest of slow lorises. Disrupted/nightmare-filled sleep is more manageable when you can decant from bed to settee with a blanket during the daytime. Reducing panic attacks to moments of breathlessness/fear is something else.

I’m shocked now that Rich and I returned to work so soon after LB’s death in 2013 (with no pressure from either of our employers). But of course back in the day we had no idea of what lay ahead. 

“Who supported you after LB’s death?” asked the mental health team a few weeks ago.

Supported us? In the wake of LB’s sudden, brutal, unexpected and utterly preventable death? Like a police liaison officer? Ah. No. LB died in the NHS. There’s none of that stuff. Respond offered us telephone counselling via social media. 

We didn’t know…

I think we probably thought at the time that work would be a distraction from intense pain while the wheels of justice and accountability turned in the background. With the odd nudge from our newly appointed legal representatives.

We returned to work in the early days of the dirty tricks game the Trust and local authority were playing. All we knew at the time was that the Trust pegged LB’s death a ‘natural cause’ death in online board papers in late August. We didn’t know about the behind scenes activity; the briefings and secret reviews; the twists and turns, lies and obstruction. We didn’t know these processes would drag on for years or how much of an enormous collective effort would be necessary to gain accountability.  

This was and is our ordinary. In the extraordinary space of public sector related preventable death.

As it is for so many other families. Many of whom have endured more than the 4.5 years we have, while others regularly join this liminal space. There’s little change. There’s little support for young people who struggle and teeter on the brink of admission to inappropriate settings while their loved ones do everything they humanly can to pick their way through the paucity of appropriate care. It simply ain’t good enough.

A new National Director…

Ray James, the newly appointed NHS England National Director for Learning Disability tweeted earlier today.

James is, of course, one in a long line of people charged with the task of reducing the scandalous number of people incarcerated in assessment and treatment units. We’ve witnessed a series of awkward and sometimes embarrassing failures in trying to do this, not least the Winterbourne View Joint Improvement Programme/Concordat and Stephen Bubb’s big breakfast. I don’t doubt James’ determination and commitment to the task he faces. What is concerning is the disappearing of everything that came before. A snapping of lines.

Another day, another face, another resolution. While people continue to live heartrendingly miserable existences.

No #Learningfromdeaths

Rich was appointed as one of two family representatives on NHS England’s Programme Board last summer for the Learning from Deaths programme (work commissioned as an outcome of the Mazars review). He received an email from a family advocate who said that families would be reassured by his involvement in the work. The first event he attended was a two day gig at the Oval in November. He walked out after two hours. The meeting opened with two apologies from NHS England – not for the fact that 75 bereaved families had to be in the room in the first place – but that no work had been done for last ten months and for the shoddy organisation of the original meeting. As the meeting unfolded, Rich felt he could not validate the process.

In December a further event was held in London with Jeremy Hunt and the great and the good. The unofficial erasure of any focus on the premature mortality of learning disabled people was completed during this meeting. Two years pretty much to the day from publication of the Mazars review. Hunt ploughing ahead with his misplaced belief that improving the process of investigation for patients more generally would improve the investigation of the deaths of marginalised patients. 

What about the work relating to learning disability related deaths? I and one other family member tweeted during this event.

“Ask NHS Improvement or NHS England” replied the Care Quality Commission. “They’re tasked with taking forward the recommendation relating to learning disabled people.”

We did. Neither responded. 

Certain people don’t count. Or worse.

They never have.

A full circle…

We woke this new year morning to the news that Toby Young has been appointed to ‘help lead’ the Office for Students (OfS). 

There is so much so wrong with his appointment… a quick search on twitter will reveal his appalling views, ill-informed commentary and actions while he tries to (ironically and pointlessly) disinfect his own timeline through a heavy handed programme of deletion. Relevant here is his apparent distaste for disabled children and associated flag waving for ‘progressive eugenics’.  (Improving the ‘genetic stock of the least well off’ in an attempt to improve the overall national stock…) 

Eugenics is, of course, eugenics as @Education720 points out: 

Woolf’s diary entry was written in 1915:

… we met & had to pass a long line of imbeciles. The first was a very tall young man, just queer enough to look at twice, but no more; the second shuffled, & looked aside; and then one realised that everyone in that long line was a miserable ineffective shuffling idiotic creature, with no forehead, or no chin, & an imbecile grin, or a wild suspicious stare.  It was perfectly horrible.  They should certainly be killed.

There are long, long lines that can be traced here. Plentiful dot joining between the desire for the ‘improvement of the British breed’ (Churchill, 1899) and the eugenics movement. The continuously poor treatment, neglect, bullying or abuse of learning disabled people in whatever setting – long stay institutions, the community, inpatient hospitals, home – by a range of individuals and professionals over the last century. And Young’s support for ‘progressive eugenics’.

Complex and complicated strands are interwoven into and between these lines; ignorance, maliciousness, systemic and structural processes, cronyism, fear, power, gender, economics, culture, power, politics, stupidity, greed, elitism, narcissism… the list goes on and on.

‘Progressive eugenics’ is a deeply flawed and harmful ideology that denies any recognition of the humanity, creativity, compassion, love, diversity, joy and brilliance people bring to society. I miss LB with an ache that hasn’t diminished in over four years. My heart contracts and eyes well up in a split second whenever I think about his gentleness, humour, generosity, curiosity and straightforwardness. Contrasting his obvious qualities with the bile that Young (and others like him) spew, with nonsensical reward and little censure, is unspeakably grotesque.

How is it possible that not one person, in a long, long line of influential people who can and should speak up and call this for what it is, ever does?

 

Crown Court

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When we were kids, off school with a bug, flu or other illness, we’d snooze in front of the big old (tiny) TV. ‘School programmes’ (shudder) in the morning followed by a less dull but still dull drama (was it a drama? I dunno… maybe it was based on actual cases) called Crown Court at lunchtime.

Crown Court. A kind of ritual endurance, marking the mid point to the crawl to the end of school time and delights like Little House on the Prairie. Time for lunch if not already scoffed. A soft, non medical drug to easily bring on slumber if you felt like shite.

I dug out the theme tune on Youtube earlier. Rich, in another room, unexpectedly shouted “Is that Coronation Street?”

Off sick to the same tune/drama. Capturing the ennui, traffic free streets, all male advocates, a dose of beige and a baby Zoe Wanamaker.

 

On 18 September Sloven pleaded guilty to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecution of LB’s death at Banbury Magistrates court. The magistrate referred the ‘case’ to the Crown Court. The next hearing was held in Oxford Crown court on October 13*. The judge then set a date – 27 November – to decide a sentencing date. [I know.]

A second HSE prosecution for the death of Teresa Colvin was raised during this hearing. Teresa died a year before LB. Months after Mike Holder, a health and safety expert, meticulously documented patient safety risks which Katrina Percy and the Sloven board ignored.

[Edward Hartley, in turn, died months after LB’s death flagged up issues around epilepsy training and understanding, risk assessment and observation levels. Edward’s death, like so many others, has yet to edge or inch towards proper scrutiny and answers.]

On 20 November the HSE prosecution relating to Teresa Colvin’s death was held at the Oxford Magistrates court. [Sorry. It’s complicated].

Tomorrow (Monday) a hearing at Oxford Crown Court will pin down the timetable for the sentencing date.

The judge will be asked to sentence both HSE prosecutions together. Or formally agree to do so.

This is for various reasons, not least the importance of joining the dots between what happened to Teresa and LB and for the judge to understand the extent of (repeated) failings. Other considerations are the importance of consistent sentencing and costs.

Breathe.

Crown Court. Childhood memories. The never ever. The never colliding.

LB. Teresa Colvin. Shades of Edward Hartley. And so many others.

The sentencing hearing

The sentencing hearing is, we’ve been warned, likely to last for up to two days and will probably happen between next February and June. Time has lost any meaning as next year becomes dusted with various dates or anticipated dates. I can’t imagine what life without the stench and stain of NHS related processes looks or feels like.

The HSE barrister will present the two ‘cases’ in turn and the Sloven barrister will present a set of mitigating circumstances to try to reduce or contain the punishment (fine). They have a statutory duty apparently, as a public sector body to do this.

There is no such statutory duty to prevent a failing Chief Executive disappearing with a year off and around a £200k pay off. There is no statutory duty to stop a public sector body from recording a preventable death as one of natural causes. From openly and publicly withholding information that is in the public interest. From wasting public money on dubious training programmes. And the rest.

One grotesque rule for the bloatedly powerful and another for the rest of us herbs.

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*I had at the time, and have had since, visions of Richard Partridge telling me to turn to page 908 in a massive legal bundle to confirm that, yes I was not present at this hearing. And then scuttle back to page 26, para 4…

I was in the US. I wasn’t supposed to be there.

 

 

The sick note with no ‘post’ in sight

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I spoke to my GP on the phone on Monday (practice process). A GP really. Not my GP. Or maybe she is my GP but she left the surgery today. I’ve not met her before. My GP dropped our family from his too-busy list a good two years or so ago.

“Would you mind giving me some context as to why you may be experiencing these symptoms…?”
“Er, well our son died four years ago…”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Can I ask how he died?”
“He drowned in a hospital bath.”
“Ah. I’m afraid I can’t hear you properly. The line is terrible.”
“He.drowned.in.an.inpatient.unit.”
“He drowned?”
“Yes. On the Slade House site.”
“Oh. I am so sorry to hear that…”

And so the tale unfolded. Today at a face to face appointment I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and signed off work. ‘Treatment’ options are anti-depressants, a mental health intervention of some vague shape (the referral will take up to 6 weeks) or bereavement counselling.

I’m left both unsure and un-reassured how PTSD can be treated when there is no ‘post’ in sight. Is there an ongoing version? The various disciplinary processes are set to stretch well into next year.

Our legal team strongly suggested Rich and I went to see our GPs a good year or so ago, saying how damaging the process is in the long term. No, we both said. This thing ain’t gonna lick us. That was without reckoning on Richard Partridge’s brutal, cruel and unnecessary take down at the GMC tribunal in the summer. Or the Nursing and Midwifery Council being so incompetent they shared our personal details (including my bank details…) with the six nurses and their advocates under investigation around the same time.

I’m writing this in part to underline to other families how the processes involved in gaining accountability in the NHS are lengthy, destructive and deeply harmful. With little in the way of protection of or care about your health and well being. The best you can expect is a support number to ring and start again from scratch. Telling your version of the ‘four years ago our son…’ story to another person. With all that entails, demands and saps. Somewhat ironically, you cease being a patient when you enter the terrain of NHS investigations and become something else. I’m not sure what.

The mental health referral is underway (I think). In early January I have to contact the surgery and speak to a GP (who may or may not be my new GP from today) on the phone. And repeat the above exchange.

There is so much that could be done so differently here it leaps off the page. But it ain’t our job to spell it out. Again. Why don’t some of you – occupying very well paid senior roles to do so – crack on and do it?

Update: Someone from the Mental Health team rang me yesterday evening and asked for symptoms rather than story. [Thank you.] I’m going to have an assessment next week. (Thank you for the messages of support, advice and information which are much appreciated).

Some right things and a humility glug

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Hoping to head off ‘witch hunt’ commentators and silent but disgruntled medics I sense may be lurking. Valerie Murphy has had numerous opportunities to ‘do the right thing’ over the last four and a half years. Right things and responsibilities. Below is a list of suggested right things based on my observations and experience of the GMC process.

Right things

(a) The early days

  • Say sorry. Your actions may or may not have contributed to what happened but just say sorry. Someone has died. [As a bit of an aside, a key thread running through this interminable process has been the importance of demonstrating remorse and insight. This can only start with with a genuine apology.]
  • Welcome a full and frank investigation into what happened and contribute to it openly and honestly.
  • Scrutinise your professional practice and involve a range of colleagues and others to help think through and understand what happened and why, and how it might be avoided in the future.

(b) Across the investigatory process

  • Avoid trying to cast blame elsewhere.
  • Be transparent, open and honest. Don’t, for example, ‘save’ information like an earlier death to share in a particular setting at a particular time.
  • You have a set of duties to adhere to. Try not to get sucked into shite practices that may be demonstrated by the Trust executive board or others.

(c) Interactions with your counsel

  • Instruct your barrister to treat everyone involved with respect and sensitivity.
  • Take ownership of your position and role in the investigatory process. If, for example, your barrister begins to ask unnecessary or distressing questions of a witness, tap her on the arm and close it down.
  • If something in the evidence upsets you, try and suck it up. The process should enable embellishments and more to be exposed. You don’t need to have your upset recorded.

During the tribunal

  • If particular issues or concerns with your professional practice are highlighted, work out appropriate ways to demonstrate you’ve improved them. Ask for help if you are unsure how to approach this.
  • Try, as much as is humanly possible, to turn up to every day of the hearing.
  • Think carefully about who you ask to be a character witness and make sure they are properly briefed about the importance of this and what is expected of them.

A final reflection is the professional arrogance medics can exhibit. I witnessed this on twitter this week when a discussion effectively ended with non-NHS commentators being dismissed as ‘armchair critics who wouldn’t last 5 minutes in the NHS’. I don’t know at what stage in the education or experience of being a medic this arrogance kicks in (I ain’t a medic). But I do wonder if a glug or two of humility is a good tonic every so often.

 

Reflecting on the GMC hearing

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Spent the day, exhausted, dozing on the settee and trying to make sense of the GMC tribunal*. The full determination can be read here. Having waited since August 7 when the tribunal began (and the dread leading up to that date) and limping over the past two weekends of part hearing, hearing that the panel found that Valerie Murphy’s fitness to practice was impaired was both a relief and beyond distressing. I’ve no coherent thoughts, just a set of (overlapping) questions and reflections. Hopefully the process of writing will help.

1. Is Murphy’s ‘medical practice’ common?
The damning determination (worth reading in full to get some idea of the medical ‘care’ learning disabled people can expect to receive) misses some points that made my stomach curdle during the August hearing. Is specialist learning disability health provision so impoverished that it’s OK to prescribe medication before meeting patients? What does this mean and suggest about the treatment of certain patients?

Can it ever be acceptable, knowing you’re going on a two week holiday at the weekend, to not see an 18 year old young man you’ve agreed to be admitted on the previous Tuesday evening? A young man brutally restrained and sectioned that first night [Howl].

Is it common for medical consultants to tout a travelling suitcase with patient records for a colleague to rummage through?

Have these points dropped off the determination because there are bigger issues to pursue or because they aren’t seen as unusual?

2. Was Partridge’s ‘defence’ appropriate? 
A pre-meeting with the GMC earlier this year to go through my evidence left me reeling. It wasn’t a patch on the cross-examination I was subjected to in August by Murphy’s barrister, Richard Partridge. The pre-meeting preparation suggests that the cross-examination I endured wasn’t unusual.

Partridge repeated similar lines to his colleague, Alan Jenkins, who represented Murphy at LB’s inquest. Both focused on my ‘failings’ and the ‘Dr Crapshite’ post. On what they both seemed to view as unacceptable, unreasonable and discrediting action by a feckless mother. Ignoring what that post (and so many others) revealed about the lack of available support. This focus says so much more about them. And/or their client.

3. Ted why? 
Twitter discussion has focused on Murphy still practicing in Cork. Earlier, a minor bombshell from Stuart who lives in/near Cork. Murphy’s appointment (which is still unclear) was heralded as a ‘turning point’ in CAMHS service provision. An expert from Britain, leaving her investigation cloud behind her.

Prof Ted Dinan, the Gut Man, was prepared to offer a character witness to a colleague he seemingly barely knew. What were you thinking Ted? Boldly pegging Murphy in the top 10% of Irish psychiatrists [shudder]. He told the travelling suitcase story without faltering. While twitter groaned and buckled with disbelief, a few sharp questions reduced his story to a handful of contact hours – “in an academic year she gave two lectures and approximately 14 hours of tutorials” – and help with 5 patients across two years.

He stated that he regarded Dr Murphy as “extremely competent” and marked her apart from other consultants he had worked with, particularly in respect of her willingness to come in and give her assistance.

In contrast to her apparent unwillingness to see LB for 19 days.

4. What price power and insight?
Power. On April 24 2014 Murphy received a letter from the Sloven Chief Medical Officer stating ‘it was not considered that any further action is required in this matter‘. A clean bill of medical health from the Sloven exec. The various CQC inspections, Verita report, inquest and Mazars review processes led to no further scrutiny of her medical practice. We made the GMC referral (with Charlotte Haworth Hird) in May 2014.

Without this referral Murphy would, I assume, be continuing her practice of ‘implicit risk assessments’ (in her head) and remote prescribing in Oxfordshire, Cork or somewhere else. How can this possibly be?

Insight. Reflexivity or reflectivity is a central task for sociologists. Constantly reflecting on stuff; who we are in terms of our identity and experiences, our assumptions, what we bring to our research, how we interact with research participants and the data generated, and our analysis. I’ve always thought of it as a sound task for life. Like I’ve long thought that ‘easy read’ texts should be the stuff of everyday life, not an added extra when funds or thought permit. Adjustments that make life better for everyone.

Murphy failed on insight. She failed over and over again. Her barrister arguably added to this with his own apparent lack of insight. 

We’ve been brutalised by this process. At the mercy of timescales decided by others, cross-examination, forced to revisit what happened, rehashing blame lines… our lives on hold. John Lish captured the experience of the tribunal perfectly in a tweet.

There must be a better way.

*Am now off ‘sick’ for the week. Wary of the extreme spaces we now inhabit and what these mean. It’s only two weeks until the @HSE hearing to set the date for the HSE hearing…