A baby girl tragically died in her mum’s arms after a hospital misdiagnosed her and shockingly missed her life-threatening condition.
11-week-old Nova Maynard Parsons, from East Grinstead, died from a bowel obstruction but delays at the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital in Brighton meant the condition was not caught right away. Although a coroner ruled the baby died from natural causes, she added that both neglect and hold ups contributed to her tragic and untimely death. Hospital bosses were forced to apologise but Nova’s heartbroken parents told the inquest her near-death situation, at the time, was not made clear to them until they probed doctors.
Nova was born two weeks overdue at the Princess Royal Hospital, in Haywards Heath, on December 22, 2019, with a rare but treatable bowel and intestine issue and was taken into surgery just 36 hours after her birth. Issues ramped up on March 6 when Nova “was not acting herself and seemed grumpy and unsettled” after she sneezed and fell off a sofa at home.
Her dad Andy and mum India Parsons said she was sick several times later and took her to the hospital at 10:50pm after calling 111, according to Brighton and Hove News. India said: “They found no obvious signs of head injury. They wanted to keep checking on her and so she was admitted for the night in the A&E ward.”
She added: “(The next day) we were told that due to Nova’s vomiting they suspected gastroenteritis and we accepted this diagnosis.” The mother worryingly said she spoke to doctors and nurses at the Royal Alexandra Hospital about her growing concerns for Nova’s condition but felt like her worries were being dismissed.
A review “into the delayed recognition of a deteriorating baby” later found cognitive bias, human error and medics were looking after a high number of critical patients. India told the inquest: “It really felt like no one was taking responsibility for Nova and she was being passed around.”
India and Andy recognised worrying symptoms in Nova but doctors decided to continue observations beyond 48 hours but neonatal surgeon Saravanakumar Paramalingam said it was then too late as the baby lacked “anatomical robustness”. A middle-grade specialty doctor, Mohammad Asif, checked Nova in the afternoon on March 10 and believed she needed surgery but he failed to contact the on-call consultant.
Asif waited several hours for Paramalingam to come to the hospital but he cancelled her surgery that evening. Nova went into the operating room at 10am the next morning but she lost blood and had to be rushed to a paediatric intensive care unit in Southampton.
A doctor at this hospital found around 15cm of functional bowel left in Nova, which would not be enough to survive so her parents made the heartwrenching decision to withdraw her life support around 4am the next day. Her mum told the inquiry: “She died in my arms within a few minutes.”
Andy said: “We would have liked the doctors to have listened to and acted on our concerns. We didn’t always feel like they took our concerns seriously.” India added: “It felt as though we were treated as over-cautious parents. Parents do know what’s normal and when their children are not themselves.”
The inquest at the Coroner’s Court, in Horsham, which ended on April 17, found there had been “a gross failure to provide basic medical attention to someone in a dependent position”.
Senior coroner for West Sussex and Brighton and Hove, Penelope Schofield, said: “Nova died from small intestinal necrosis, caused by a bowel obstruction which was not identified promptly by the treating clinicians following her admission to the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital on Saturday 7 March 2020.”
The coroner added: “The delay in undertaking a timely surgical review and arranging emergency surgery was a causative factor in her death and therefore Nova died from natural causes which were contributed to by neglect.”
Deputy chief executive Andy Heeps, from University Hospitals Sussex, apologised after the inquest, saying: “We deeply regret that Nova did not receive the care she should have.” Staff have been given extra training following the tragic death and changes have been made to paediatric surgery services.
At Reach and across our entities we and our partners use information collected through cookies and other identifiers from your device to improve experience on our site, analyse how it is used and to show personalised advertising. You can opt out of the sale or sharing of your data, at any time clicking the “Do Not Sell or Share my Data” button at the bottom of the webpage. Please note that your preferences are browser specific. Use of our website and any of our services represents your acceptance of the use of cookies and consent to the practices described in our Privacy Notice and Cookie Notice.
