A sick new-born baby could have been killed by a hospital's drug prescription of fifteen times the correct dose, his shocked parents have been informed.
Gareth and Heather Jennings say only a community nurse's intervention saved their six-week-old son Jadon from a "potentially fatal" overdose of the antibiotic prescribed at Royal Bolton Hospital to treat an infection, the Manchester Evening News reports. Heather, 37, gave birth to Jadon, her first child with Gareth, 36, at the hospital on March 6. He said the birth was problematic from the start, with misjudged labour and a ruptured placenta.
Just a month after he was born, Jadon fell ill with a high temperature and was taken to hospital. It was first thought he had contracted a bug due to cross-contamination, before doctors suggested he might need to receive an IV drip for suspected meningitis. It was later decided to treat Jadon for the initial infection instead and on April 14, the hospital prescribed the antibiotic clindamycin with instructions to give him three 5ml spoonfuls, four times a day. As prescribed, the baby would have received 60ml of the medication a day.
It was only after a community nurse visited the family the day before the round of medication was due to begin that they were warned that the prescribed dosage was 15 times the recommended amount. “The community nurse had left some stuff in the kitchen so had come back to pick it up,” Gareth, who works as a carer, said. “While they were here, my wife mentioned that the prescription seemed a bit high and asked them to check it.
"The nurse turned to my wife and went, ‘You’ve not given him this yet, have you?’ He was absolutely shocked. He explained that if we gave that amount to him, he’d overdose and be dead by the end of the week.” Gareth said he was left "absolutely fuming" by the revelation of the error and went to the hospital for a clarification on how it had happened. “I went and kicked off at the hospital,” he explained.
“I was going absolutely mental. I haven’t got a clue how they’ve managed to make that mistake.” He said the medication has since been amended to 1ml four times a day - but he and Heather would not use the hospital again. “How are we supposed to trust them any more?,” Gareth asked.
“I did question that it seemed quite a lot initially but we only went off what we were told to do. We’re not medically trained, how are we supposed to know that it was potentially fatal? I have no trust in Royal Bolton Hospital now. My baby’s leg could be hanging off and I’d still drive past that hospital and go to Salford instead. I’ll never take him back to that hospital, never in a million years.
"I understand they’re overrun and they’re struggling at the moment, but at the end of the day they shouldn’t still be making potentially dangerous mistakes like this. This could have happened to someone else who doesn’t get a second opinion like we did.” Gareth and Heather have now filed a complaint with Royal Bolton Hospital’s Patient Advice and Liaison Service and are demanding an investigation into how it happened. “It’s so hard to think about what could have been,” Gareth added. “There needs to be some retraining or adjustments. Something good has got to come from this.”
Dr Francis Andrews, medical director at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, said: “I'm sorry that the Jennings family received incorrect advice about their medication and know that it must have been really concerning. We are working with them to fully understand their concerns around the care they have received as a family, so that we can establish any learning, and prevent anything similar happening in the future.”
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