Posted on 04/17/2014 1:59:44 PM PDT by Morgana
ESSEX, UK, April 16, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A UK hospital has apologized to a woman four years after doctors and staff let her 22-week premature son die in her arms within an hour of being born, despite the mother’s urgent pleas for help.
Tracy Godwin, who in 2010 held her newborn son Tom for 46 minutes before he ceased breathing, said she was never told about the hospital’s policy stating that babies born before 23 weeks would be left to die.
But the hospital has not indicated that it has changed its policy, only that it now has new guidelines in place for staff to deal properly with such cases.
A coroner has determined Southend Hospital in Essex made a series of errors including poor communication, lack of qualified staff remaining with Godwin after the delivery, and inadequate counseling following the baby’s death, reported Daily Mail.
Godwin said if she had known the hospital’s policy, she would have given birth somewhere else. The traumatic experience still haunts her.
“They put him in my arms and he cried and was wriggling around. I could feel him breathing and see his eyelashes and toes,” she said.
“But I kept thinking, ‘Where’s the incubator?’ We were begging the midwives to do something to help him but no one was saying anything. He was not stillborn, he was trying to live.”
“If they had tried for an hour and said they couldn’t do anything more for him or he was severely brain-damaged that would have been different, but he wasn’t given a chance.”
It was not until 6 weeks after the death of her son that Godwin learned about the non-resuscitation policy during a meeting with senior hospital staff.
Current UK ethical guidelines employed by many hospitals suggest that preterm infants “less than or equal to 22 weeks’ gestation” be left to die while receiving “compassionate care only.”
A baby girl born prematurely at a UK hospital in 2012 barely escaped death after doctors discovered that she weighed just enough to be considered “viable” according to their standards of infant care, not realizing that it was a pair of scissors left accidentally on the scale that bumped up the baby’s weight to their acceptable standard.
Godwin, who has received undisclosed damages from the hospital, believes that her ordeal has "brought about significant change at the hospital, and the fact that no other mother will go through what I went through.”
The coroner ruled that the baby died from natural causes and that the hospital’s lack of care “did not affect the outcome.”
!
Murder
No reason to try to help. Their odds are too low for survival. Better to save those funds and resources for important and life-improving things like scalp massages for political leaders and extra care rationed out based on race statistics.
Another future productive citizen snuffed out to save a non productive citizen who will be dependent
This is the kind of statement I would have previously expected to hear from the USSR, or China.
I can't imagine the pain this woman went through watching this happen, helplessly. Twenty-two weeks is right on the cusp of possible survival, and maybe there wasn't a chance, but it's hard to know for sure - and it's sometimes hard to know dates for sure. This kind of ‘policy-driven’ medical decision making takes empathy and humanity out of medicine.
I wonder, if this child had been born to the Royal family, what would have been done?
Let me guess, their new policy will be for the attending physician to throw newborns out the window.
You nailed it. We don’t know because they didn’t try. Had they helped this baby and the baby still died, the mother would have some sense of peace.
But leaving her cold like that... I cannot imagine the rage an grief that she must’ve felt in that hour. What insensitive, inhumane a******s.
(Sometimes I despise censoring. This situation calls for profanity.)
This attitude reminds me of the last time a relative of mine was in the Intensive Care Unit. Most of the Docs and staff had decided that the person had lived long enough, and that his time was up, and he should just be given comfort care.
No one was willing to go all out to help him, and in fact “mistakes” kept happening which made it even harder for him to fight successfully.
Accident? Who doesn't notice setting a baby down on a pair of scissors? More likely a compassionate God-fearing nurse slipped the most convenient small object she could onto that scale without anyone noticing.
Like the Hebrew midwives who saved the baby boys by telling pharaobama that the Hebrew woman delivered more quickly than the Egyptians, before they could get to them.
That was quite a few years ago...I think the standard weeks have gone down a couple...not sure about weight.
Back then the outcomes were not good for 23-24 weeker's....
My wife and I had a 22 week baby and I wouldn't wish that on anyone....It was a mis-carry...delivered dead. It was horrible....
That was before I was in the health care biz....
FWIW-
These death policies are the inevitable result of socialism. Socialized medicine is so much more expensive to maintain than private medicine because of the unbelievable number of paper pusher jobs that the bureaucracy generates. There is an ever shrinking percentage of the funds allocated to actual medical treatment while the desk jockeys multiply in numbers and rates of remuneration. Eventually you end up with a National Health Service that employs millions (and well paid millions at that) and treats no one.
Apparently in the UK, the survival rate for premies under 23 weeks is zero percent.
Was the body then burned for electricity?
>22-week premature son die in her arms
In her arms? A 14 week old child would fit easily in the palm of her hand. If I remember correctly, about the size of a peach and approximately 3/4 of an ounce in weight.
I’ve never heard of a baby that can survive outside of the womb before about 20 weeks.
I would like to know who made the coroner God.
The hospital was running low on fuel to heat the building.
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