The families of children who were harmed at Great Ormond Street hospital are urging it to publish a report written last year after concerns were raised about a surgeon who worked there.
The hospital trust has launched an urgent review of the care of 721 children seen by the consultant orthopaedic surgeon Yaser Jabbar over a five-year period.
The trust had previously commissioned a review by the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) of its paediatric orthopaedic service in 2022 “after concerns were raised by a number of our patient families and staff”.
A lawyer representing the families of the children is now urging Great Ormond Street to publish those findings, which have been seen by the Sunday Times.
The newspaper reported that the 100-page document concluded that senior executives had “manifestly failed in their responsibility” and that the hospital’s orthopaedic department was not “currently safe for patients”.
Caroline Murgatroyd is a senior associate solicitor at Hudgell Solicitors who is representing families of children who have leg length discrepancies, nerve injuries and in one case an amputation. She told Times Radio: “There has been reference to this … report that was produced last year. Now that report hasn’t been made available publicly – I haven’t seen it, the families haven’t seen it.
“My understanding is that report does address some of the departmental failures, and details some of the reports that were made by staff. And there is a big lack of information there at the moment as to when concerns were first raised, how they were dealt with … so I’d really encourage Great Ormond Street to release that report to the public.”
She added that it was “really, really important that [families] understand how this came about and how it could go on so long”.
While she praised the hospital’s work in reviewing individual patients’ medical records and reporting where failures in care have been identified, she said there could be more transparency “in terms of the wider departmental issues of what was actually going on at the trust and governance”.
“That’s really important to families, because they want to know why this happened and what course of events led to all of this. And so we can also make sure that it really doesn’t happen again,” she said.
Murgatroyd said accusations made by some of the families she is representing include the “wrong choice of surgery; surgery performed to an unreasonable standard; failure to advise parents about the risk and benefits of undergoing and not undergoing surgery, so failure to obtain informed consent”.
Of the 39 cases that had been reviewed by Great Ormond Street so far in an anticipated 18-month process, 15 patients had come to no harm, nine had suffered “low to moderate harm” and 13 had come to “severe harm” – that is likely to include lifelong injuries, the hospital said.
A spokesperson for the hospital said: “We have contacted all patients and families who have been impacted and where harm has been identified, discussed their cases with them under our duty of candour.
“The full report contains personally identifiable data relating to patients and staff and it would not be appropriate to share it.
“However, the trust intends to share the contents of an executive summary through our publicly available board papers on 24 December. Public release of this information needs to be timed to take into consideration patient communications, which remains our priority.”
Jabbar, who lives in Dubai and no longer works at the London hospital, is reported to be an expert in limb reconstruction but has not had a licence to practise medicine in the UK since 8 January, according to the General Medical Council’s website. He has been approached for comment.
