By Gabriel Princewill-
Whipps Cross hospital is today slammed by this publication, following the death of a man suffering with heart problems after spending a day in Whipps Cross Hospital.
Muhammad Tariq, 55, died in the late hours of August 7, 2021, after being admitted with radiating neck pain and heart palpitations at 4.50am.
Mr Tariq was sent to an acute assessment ward, where he remained without being checked by doctors on their day shift until he was found struggling to breathe at around 10pm. In other words, he was abandoned for over 15 hours. Despite this major failing, there has been no openly known accountability for the unarguable professional negligence which likely contributed to his death.
Suing the hospital for professional negligence would legally require demonstrating that had the correct procedures taken place, Mr. Tariq would not have died. Medics at the London hospital claimed the contrary, stating the eventual demise of the patient to have been inevitable.
The inquest heard that doctors fitted a mask ventilator and attempted needle decompression to clear blood which they believed had accumulated around his heart, but he was pronounced dead at 11.16pm that night.
Eight months after his death, the hospital has failed to explain to this publication why he was neglected all day , and what internal action has been taken to ensure accountability.
At an inquest into Mr Tariq’s death at The Adult College of Barking & Dagenham, assistant coroner Dr Shirley Radcliffe ruled that he died of natural causes linked to heart disease.
However, a senior doctor at the Whipps Cross was at loss for words to explain why Mr Tariq had stayed on the ward all day without being reviewed in-person by a doctor.
Dr Simon Green, clinical director for acute medicine, said: “It isn’t at all clear why the junior doctors didn’t alert Dr Rizvi about the fact that there was a patient that hadn’t been checked.
“My personal practice is to check the list myself and I believe it is now Dr Rizvi’s procedure. Furthermore, it’s normal procedure for the nurses to flag it to us if a patient isn’t being seen.
“Normally there are safeguards against this happening and it really wasn’t possible to work out why none of those happened on this occasion.”
No doctor in the hospital has so far been held accountable for the absence of safeguards on the day in question, and on all accounts, the family have not been compensated for the negligence that potentially led to the death of the ill man.
Giving evidence, on-duty consultant Dr Fareeha Rizvi said she suspected Mr Tariq was suffering from an angina but that most of his tests had come back as “normal”.
She added: “If I had seen him I would have had a very low suspicion of his level of risk, in my past experience these cases are usually very traumatic.
“Mr Tariq was unusual in that when he presented he was quite well, if I had done a CT scan I would have agreed with the plan.”
Words stated retrospectively offer no substitute for the reasonable expectations of medical practitioners at the time of need. The brutal reality is that Whipps Cross hospital woefully failed Mr. Tariq for reasons best known to them.
Dr Radcliffe accepted the doctors’ evidence that their professional plan would have been unchanged if they had seen him earlier and that efforts were made to treat him on the evening of his death.
Yet, the credibility of professionals who have fundamentally failed to fulfil their remit is invariably damaged under circumstances like these. Comments made to mitigate an abysmal failing avowedly render them lacking in substance.
Dr Radcliffe said Mr Tariq’s medical records showed he was pre-diabetic, a smoker and had “significant” hypertension.
His cause of death was recorded as hemopericardium, which is an accumulation of blood in part of the heart.
Acting medical director, Dr Rina Davison, acting medical director at Whipps Cross Hospital said: “We offer our sincere sympathies to the family of Mr Muhammad Tariq.
“Although the inquest concluded he died of natural causes, we assured the coroner we will share the learnings from this case widely across our hospitals.“
Whipps hospital was unable to explain to this publication what the learnings from this case were, and why after nearly a year, they still haven’t been shared widely across hospitals.
Our verdict is that there is a grosse level of incompetence in this hospital, and the system there needs to be overhauled. We will keep our eyes on this hospital.