Times reports on GOSH orthopaedics scandal involving Yaser Jabbar

Caron Heyes spoke to The Times about her client Tate, who is one of 723 young patients to be recalled by Great Ormond Street Hospital over the misconduct of the orthopaedic surgeon Yaser Jabbar.

Jabbar is accused of carrying out unnecessary operations on children, falsifying records and failing to obtain proper consent and is at the centre of an inquiry. Young patients have been left with lifelong injuries, including amputation, chronic pain and deformed limbs.

Tate was operated on by Jabbar twice for a leg length discrepancy after several years of supervision following a traffic accident as a child. He has suffered years of pain, which was dismissed in follow-up appointments as being muscular. The family were shocked to learn last month that Jabbar had carried out an additional operation on Tate’s ankle, without consent, for a misalignment that did not exist and that a surgical nail had been incorrectly inserted into his tibia.

Now 19, Tate requires further surgery to remove metalwork and correct what should have been done when he first sought treatment. He is extremely angry and worried that further surgery could result in him losing his leg.

Caron told The Times: "Tate is a young man who was betrayed by people he trusted and that is going to impact on his ongoing ability to accept medical care, guidance and treatment."

On Thursday the GOSH Board of Trustees met to discuss findings of a damning report by the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) into the safety and efficacy of the orthopaedic department. It found it to be "dysfunctional” and warned that the lower limb reconstruction service was not “safe for patients or adequate to meet demand”. It was highly critical of the wider culture of silence and fear at the children’s hospital.

Among numerous concerns raised, it says: “Anaesthetic teams described how surgeons requested pain-relieving interventions were not to be given to patients as they would ‘take too long’.”

It also said that the “theatre team staff did not always feel confident to raise questions or issues with surgeons regarding important elements of patient care” and that some consultants working in the department had “little experience of complex paediatric work”.

Caron is acting for several clients who have suffered very severe consequences of the care they received under Jabba. She said: "A failure in governance was a central theme in the RCS report and it is something I see time and time again in other NHS trusts. Good and timely governance and good clinical leadership are both directly linked to patient safety.

“It’s not about having a big public inquiry years after catastrophic failures of care like we are seeing here. It’s about making the systems work when the care is being delivered. This week the government issued its call for ideas to help shape its new ten-year health plan — well, here’s an idea: make governance and accountability a centrepiece, along with transparency and patient-centred care.”