Starting school should be a happy milestone. For this family, it’s a reminder of tragedy

The warm February sun was shining on Asher Broadley as he posed for photos on his first day of kindergarten.

He wore a proud smile under an oversized broadbrim hat, but Helen and Dan Broadley could tell their son was nervous. He clung tight to them, as he had every day since his seven weeks in neonatal intensive care. This was just one of many milestones he would hit without his twin brother, his “partner in crime”.

“I felt this sense of unfairness … he shouldn’t have to do it alone,” Helen said. “Every birthday is hard, every Mother’s Day is hard, every Father’s Day is challenging because you’re celebrating these happy moments, but you’re missing a part of your family, and that will never go away.”

Helen and Dan Broadley with their children Fern, 2, and Asher, 5, at their home in Manly, sharing Finn’s story.Credit: Janie Barrett

Five years have passed since twins Asher and Finn Broadley were delivered in an emergency caesarean section at Northern Beaches Hospital. Asher survived, but spent almost two months in neonatal intensive care. Finn did not.

An internal investigation found no single “root cause” for Finn’s death, but noted a lack of senior medical oversight, issues with the hospital’s electronic medical records system (EMRS), and a failure to escalate a rapid response call after detecting an abnormal heart rate.

“My family and I were failed by Northern Beaches Hospital,” the couple wrote in their submission to a parliamentary inquiry into the troubled hospital.

The Broadleys have never felt the tragic events of November 2019 were properly investigated. A scheduled meeting with then-health minister Brad Hazzard was postponed and then cancelled due to COVID.

Then in February, after what would have been Finn’s first day of school, the Broadleys read about the death of two-year-old Joe Massa at the same hospital. The following week, Leah Pitman and Dustin Atkinson lost their newborn daughter Harper in circumstances Helen described as “closely aligned” to their own.

“We were told a lot of it was because [the hospital] had just opened, but five years on, those problems still appear to be going on,” Helen said.

Now, they are telling their story for the first time, hoping to have their son’s death re-investigated and ensure the hospital learns from mistakes made under Healthscope as it moves into public hands.

‘Life or death’

Asher and Finn were monochorionic diamniotic identical twins, meaning they shared a placenta but each had their own sac.

The Broadleys knew the pregnancy was high-risk. They were diligent, easing their parental anxieties by counting fetal kicks and regular visits to specialists. They wanted to manage the pregnancy through Royal North Shore, wary about a string of highly publicised mishaps at Northern Beaches in its first year. But they were assured the hospital could care for high-risk pregnancies and, despite never seeing the same obstetrician twice, the first 30 weeks went relatively smoothly.

Then, one Sunday evening, the twins went quiet. They were moving less, their kicks were softer. The hospital’s birthing unit told them to come in for precautionary checks.

Busy midwives struggled to detect their heart rates and, at one stage, gave the monitor to Dan while they saw other patients. “I’m a graphic designer, I’m not a doctor. It just seemed bizarre,” he said.

Helen was kept overnight for monitoring, but medical records show the twins’ vitals were not monitored from 11pm until 8.30am. When midwives conducted morning observations, they discovered one twin had an abnormal heart rate.

The investigation found this should have triggered a “rapid response” escalation under the hospital’s own protocols. Instead, a specialist doctor didn’t assess the twins until 9:30am, when an obstetrics consultant told Helen it was a “life and death situation” and called for an emergency caesarean.

What had been a calm Monday morning descended into a blur. People rushed to Helen’s bedside – shouting, pulling her clothes off, sticking needles in her arm. She had only just told Dan to go into work, but now she was given her phone to tell him they were going to deliver their twins.

“We were told a lot of it was because it [the hospital] had just opened, but five years on, those problems still appear to be going on.”

Helen Broadley

When Dan arrived at the hospital half an hour later, the twins had been delivered. Neither were breathing. Reunited in the recovery room, Dan and Helen were told they had lost Finn, and Asher had been rushed to Royal North Shore in a critical condition. They were left holding Finn, unable to fathom what had just happened as they watched cars pass on the highway below.

Northern Beaches Hospital.Credit: Nick Moir

Life after Healthscope

Several findings from the root cause analysis – including that staff had developed “work around” methods to document and locate key information on the EMS – have since been echoed in a scathing audit and the investigation into Joe Massa’s death.

These revelations compelled the Broadleys to share their story and call for Finn’s death to be re-investigated “without the involvement of Healthscope”.

Asher Broadley started kindergarten this year, where he often talks about Finn with his friends. “It’s quite an important part of his personality,” Dan says. Credit: Janie Barrett

“​​I don’t want to make a woman who’s already anxious about her pregnancy feel more anxious,” Helen said. “But, to us, it feels like there were some real failings in the care we received.”

A spokesperson for Northern Sydney Local Health District said they had provided ongoing support to Dan and Helen since the loss of baby Finn.

They said all 12 recommendations had been implemented, and Healthscope was required to submit regular quality improvement plans for maternity services. But the government could not control the IT systems Healthscope chose to use, they said.

On Monday, state parliament will debate a bill seeking to legislate an end to the public-private partnership with Healthscope.

Asked if he would support another investigation, Health Minister Ryan Park said it would be inappropriate to “duplicate or circumvent” the original report or a review under way by the Health Care Complaints Commission.

“My deepest sympathies are with the Broadley family for this unimaginable tragedy,” he said.

Asher has settled into school, where he tells his friends about Finn “with a sense of pride”.

“It’s quite an important part of his personality,” Dan said, with Helen adding: “When your DNA is the same, I don’t think you ever lose that connection.”

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