An ambulance service in north-east England has apologised to bereaved relatives after covering up mistakes made by paramedics when responding to patients who later died.
The chief executive of the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) offered her “unreserved apologies” for “historic failings” after whistleblowers told the Sunday Times that managers filtered out inconvenient facts from incident reports before they were sent to the coroner, in order to present paramedics in a more flattering light.
Two whistleblowers were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to limit them making further reports about their concerns to the authorities, including the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the police, the Sunday Times reported.
Patient advocates said the revelations suggested there remained a “culture of cover-up” in parts of the NHS.
One of the reports covered up a paramedic’s treatment of a 17-year-old girl, Quinn Evie Beadle, who killed herself near her home in Shildon, County Durham, in December 2018.
It was only much later that her family learned that police officers who were first on the scene started CPR, only to be told by the attending paramedic “you can stop now, she’s gone” after simply looking into Quinn’s eyes with a pencil torch. He then left her face down in the mud, having made no effort to clear her airway or continue with basic life support, despite her heart still pumping.
Bosses at NEAS tried to prevent the coroner hearing Quinn’s inquest from knowing the true facts by changing a witness statement compiled by an experienced clinician. The changes removed references to the paramedic’s mistakes and added that any life support offered would “not have had a positive outcome”.
The inquest began in April 2019 but was delayed after the Beadle family learned they had not been told the whole truth about how Quinn died. The coroner said they had concerns about the timeline of events and wished to seek expert opinion as to whether the paramedic was right to pronounce life extinct.
The family then had to wait until October 2020 for the inquest to be heard. The coroner recorded a narrative verdict, saying that although the paramedic did not use a defibrillator on Quinn, there was a “minute chance” she could have been saved. It was too late for Quinn’s brother, Dyllon, who took his own life in October 2019, heartbroken at his sister’s death and her treatment in her final minutes.
The NEAS said: “The coroner was critical of our governance processes in his narrative verdict, but said he was satisfied that the systems we put in place would prevent a repetition.”
The Sunday Times said Quinn’s death could be one of more than 90 cases in the past three years in which the NEAS failed to provide families with the whole truth about how their relatives died.
The NEAS would not confirm the existence of NDAs between the service and former employees but said: “We do not seek to stop employees making appropriate disclosures to raise concerns.”
Peter Walsh, the chief executive of the campaign group Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA), said: “These revelations are absolutely shocking and show that a culture of cover-up still pervades in parts of the NHS. It is an example of why we need a legal duty of candour but also shows that it needs to be enforced. There needs to be an independent review and the CQC and other regulators need to take robust action.”
Helen Ray, the NEAS chief executive, said: “We accept that there were historical failings and we have listened and acted upon the concerns raised by staff of the quality and timeliness of documents disclosed to coroners. Utmost in our mind are the families and we unreservedly apologise for the distress we have caused to them.”
Quinn’s mum, Tracey, said: “We have never had an apology from NEAS and I know that other families haven’t either. They can apologise in newspapers all they want but until they write me a letter or see me in person and apologise then I fail to feel I have been apologised to.”
In the UK the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
