A new review of into the stillborn crisis at Melbourne’s Bacchus Marsh hospital has uncovered that a further seven babies have died — bringing the total number of deaths at the maternity unit to 18.
7.30 can reveal that a “look-back” by Professor Euan Wallace has uncovered the seven other deaths dating back to 2003.
The 7.30 investigation has also discovered that three of the hospital’s doctors were the subject of notifications to the medical regulator, Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), and two of them had conditions and restrictions placed upon their registration while they were practising at Bacchus Marsh.
One of the Bacchus Marsh obstetricians, Dr Claude Calandra, had 15 writs against him for alleged medical negligence in 14 years.
Dr Calandra settled all of those cases. He did not deliver any of the stillborn babies discovered in the stillborn cluster of 2013-14, but some of the writs are for stillborn cases.
Three of the doctors who were involved delivering the 11 babies in the stillborn cluster are still working at Bacchus Marsh hospital and one was notified to AHPRA because of her role in a birth where a baby died and the mother’s subsequent care.
‘Jacinta’ is one of the mothers of the seven babies whose deaths that have now been discovered in Professor Wallace’s look-back. Her baby Ruby died in 2009.
Defective use of foetal heart monitoring has been a key concern of the review into what went wrong at Bacchus Marsh and Jacinta, who cannot be named for legal reasons, alleges that is part of what went wrong in her case.
Top Comments
This is just so scary. It's gone beyond incompetence and moved into negligence. The fact that their CTG machines are 25 years old is absolutely terrible.
I agree about the CTG machines, which should have been serviced by biomedical at the very least. But does it also highlight the complete dependence that both nursing and medical staff have on technology? Surely, highly skilled obstetricians and midwives should have the expertise to determine prlbems during labour, or are the CTG machines the scapegoat and not poor practise?
Oh, don't. Don't start me on that line of commenting, we'll be here all night!
Briefly, the over reliance on technology rather than your own knowledge and skill is terrible practice, but it's absolutely prevalent, and, unfortunately, requested by patients who don't understand the the medicalisation of childbirth is responsible for so many of the problems that we see today, rather than the solution to them.
The entire scope of the 'cascade of interventions' exists almost solely because we use and overuse technology.