Bacchus Marsh Hospital head midwife Mary Little banned for role in preventable baby deaths
A culture of secrecy and misguided confidence plagued the midwifery unit at Bacchus Marsh Hospital, with the top nurse hit with a huge ban for her role in a series of preventable baby deaths.
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The head midwife involved in a series of preventable baby deaths at Bacchus Marsh Hospital has been banned from nursing for 10 years after a series of damning findings.
Mary Little, the former nursing manager of the midwifery unit, failed to properly care for her pregnant patients, gave potentially “life threatening” medical advice and was incompetent in fetal surveillance leading to devastating consequences, a tribunal has ruled.
Eleven allegations of professional misconduct between 2008-14 against Ms Little, 72, were proven by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal last week who ordered she be reprimanded and disqualified from applying for medical registration for a decade.
In its scathing judgment, the tribunal said “almost systemic complacency and misguided self-congratulation about the quality of the maternity service” led to poor internal reviews of the clinical care at the trouble-plagued maternity ward.
Bacchus Marsh Hospital was at the centre of a cluster of potentially preventable stillbirths and neonatal deaths between 2001 and 2014.
The scandal prompted an investigation into 43 registered health practitioners that worked at the hospital.
Following a hearing last week, VCAT member Elisabeth Wentworth said Ms Little’s leadership position at the hospital was critical to the tribunal’s findings and decision in this case.
In The Fetal Surveillance Education Program midwives were required to undertake, Ms Little answered just 50 per cent of questions correctly relating to baseline fetal and maternal heart rate.
The state average score was 72.8 per cent.
Furthermore, Ms Little’s failure to recognise the incompetence of her staff meant in one instance, she gave training responsibility to a midwife “who herself needed urgent training”.
The tribunal found Ms Little also gave potentially life-threatening advice to a patient who was suffering severe pre-eclampsia.
The woman was discharged two days earlier after giving birth to her stillborn baby following a placenta abruption.
When the woman rang Ms Little complaining of blurred vision and numbness in her right side, the midwife told her to get checked at the clinic “as soon as [her] husband returns from [the] Funeral Director”.
“The advice … was inappropriate, unsafe … Mrs Little ought to have initiated an urgent transfer to an emergency department,” the tribunal found.
The tribunal said they gave little weight to the glowing character references and performance reviews from Ms Little’s colleagues given the seriousness of the misconduct.
“We observe that the positive performance appraisals may well have given Mrs Little unwarranted reassurance about her capabilities,” the tribunal said.
“Dangerous conditions should be reported, documented and publicised. They should never be normalised”.
The Nursing and Midwifery Board had argued Ms Little should promise to never again apply for a medical registration.
The tribunal ultimately ruled that disqualifying Ms Little from practice for 10 years would have the same affect.
Of the 43 health practitioners that were investigated, six were cautioned and a further six had conditions imposed on their ¬registration.
Ms Little surrendered her registration in March 2016 and has not practised since.
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