It is expected to lead to far-reaching changes in standards of care.The inquiry, chaired by Professor Ian Kennedy, is likely to recommend greater openness among doctors in their dealings with parents, more emphasis on informed consent, new safeguards against doctors who fail to live up to accepted standards and an end to the culture of arrogance among doctors.It is also expected to recommend raising standards in children’s heart surgery by concentrating care in a smaller number of centres of excellence.The inquiry was set up after three doctors at Bristol Royal Infirmary were found guilty in 1998 of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council over the deaths of 29 babies between 1988 and 1995.Two doctors, James Wisheart and John Roylance, were struck off. A third, Janardan Dhasmana, was banned from operating on children for three years – a ban that has since been extended.The report will be divided into two parts, one on events at Bristol and a second on implications for the entire NHS.. Child heart patients who died at Bristol Royal Infirmary were failed by a few people in senior positions in the hospital but even more so by the “very system that was supposed to make them well and keep them from harm”, Health Secretary Alan Milburn told the Commons today. Child heart patients who died at Bristol Royal Infirmary were failed by a few people in senior positions in the hospital but even more so by the “very system that was supposed to make them well and keep them from harm”, Health Secretary Alan Milburn told the Commons today.
Mr Milburn, announcing new measures, spoke out in a statement on the independent inquiry report, published today, into the Bristol heart scandal in which up to 35 babies under a year old died unnecessarily at the hospital between 1991 and 1995 as a result of sub-standard care.He told MPs further action was needed to prevent a repeat of the “tragedy” at the hospital where “too many” children had died during open heart surgery.Mr Milburn announced that he had appointed a national director of children’s healthcare services, Al Aynsley-Green, Nuffield Professor of Child Health at Great Ormond Street Hospital, “with immediate effect”.”His priority will be to spearhead the faster development of the first-ever national standards for children’s health services,” Mr Milburn said.He said information for patients, and specifically for parents, was being published about the questions they should ask before consenting to treatment for themselves or for their children.Mr Milburn promised to “action” recommendations in the report to set up a new independent Office for Information on Healthcare Performance to coordinate data collection about medical outcomes. There would also be an over-arching Council for the Regulation of Healthcare Professions to ensure individual professional regulatory bodies act in a consistent manner.Mr Milburn said he would consider a recommendation to set up a new regulatory body for NHS managers.. Janine Sergaint had always wanted children.

She was 35 before she met her current partner and was thrilled to become pregnant at 37. The pregnancy was relatively easy, but after her son was born, things didn’t go as she expected “Giving birth was worse than I ever could have imagined. The violence and the fear were such a shock and in the end I had to have a caesarean, which just knocked me for six. That first night my baby didn’t sleep at all and I remember looking at him and thinking ‘I feel nothing’.”Back home, things went from bad to worse “I couldn’t believe how little sleep I had to manage with Secretly, I’d wanted a girl and I began to focus on that.

I was desperately tired and miserable and my partner tried to share everything but really didn’t know what had hit him. I was terrified for our relationship, which was relatively new and just thought I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.”
It was seven months before Janine began to feel herself again. Now she is madly in love with her 18-month-old son and only wishes she had known how tough the early months can be.According to psychologist Dr Sandra Wheatley, if more pregnant women were told the harsh truths about first-time motherhood, it would greatly reduce the number who suffer from post-natal depression.She says women are too often given the “rose-tinted” impression that child birth will be a life-defining moment that makes them feel truly fulfilled.But in reality, women frequently have mixed emotions during pregnancy, and in the first few months after their babies are born, which do not match their expectations.Some feel out of their depth when confronted with a new-born child, others are shocked by the huge change in their day-to-day lives and many take months to recover from the physical trauma of childbirth.According to Dr Wheatley, health professionals, such as doctors, midwives and health visitors, voluntary organisations, friends and relatives often perpetuate the image of motherhood as a time when women are “truly fulfilled.But from her research, she said many felt they were given too little information about what to expect. “They felt the information they were given by health professionals, friends, families and books was rose-tinted, inadequate or just simply inaccurate.Dr Wheatley, a research associate at the University of Leicester, said women should be given much more frank advice about the physical and emotional impact of motherhood, so they realise that negative feelings are quite normal.”If you expect everything to be wonderful and then you have a problem, you think: ‘I have done something wrong, I must be a bad mother.’ The simplest way to stop someone feeling let down is to be honest and truthful about things.” Psychiatrists estimate that one in 10 women experience post-natal depression to some degree or another, but some experts believe that 20 to 30 per cent is a more accurate figure.Dr Wheatley, who specialises in the psychological aspects of child birth, said there was a very fine line between women being able to cope with a new baby and being overwhelmed and feeling swamped.”If they expect their experiences of motherhood to be mixed, with some good times and some bad, it doesn’t come as such a shock. Some of it will be wonderful, but some is just hard work.”Dr Wheatley’s latest research involved in-depth discussions with nine women from the start of pregnancy to their babies’ first birthday.