10 babies were stillborn due to negligence at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust since 2010, a Freedom of Information request has shown. Specialist clinical negligence law firm, Lime Solicitors, submitted an FOI to NHS Resolution which found between the financial years 2010/11 and 2020/21, the trust settled 10 clinical negligence claims relating to still births.
More than £290,000 was paid out in damages, averaging £29,000 per case, as well as £286,000 in legal fees. The data has also found that nationally, more than one baby is lost each week due to failings, with trusts across the country paying £29.8m in damages and £34.8m in legal fees across 758 clinical negligence cases.
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Nationally around 2,500 babies are born sleeping each year, but 75 of these are reportedly due to negligence. Lime Solicitors has released these figures as part of Baby Loss Awareness Week, which comes just months after midwife and nurse Donna Ockenden chaired an independent review into two decades of appalling care at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. She has now started a review at NUH.
Robert Rose, head of clinical negligence at Lime Solicitors, said: “While the Ockenden Report focused on failings in Shrewsbury and Telford, its findings appear indicative of maternity services across the country, which is further highlighted by the fact that more than one baby in England is at risk of being stillborn due to negligence each week. Failures in care are being repeated because lessons are not learned.
"There has to be change and there has to be candour when mistakes are made. Not all stillbirths are preventable."
He added: "Our NHS is fantastic. While the first duty of a healthcare system is to do no harm, sometimes things do go wrong and care falls below medical standards.
"Clinical negligence claims play a critical role in safeguarding patients against negligent treatment. In all my cases, clients are predominantly seeking to establish the truth, an apology and to ensure healthcare professionals learn from their own tragic experiences to prevent making the same mistakes in the future."
In response to the figures, Michelle Rhodes, Chief Nurse at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “We are sorry to all the families who have had a baby who was stillborn. We cannot comprehend the unimaginable distress that this must cause and we recognise that each of these cases is a tragedy.
“We are committed to learning from every incident that occurs in our Trust, to ensure we learn and improve our services going forward to prevent avoidable harm to the mothers, babies and their families under our care.”
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