getting away with murder
Doctors are supposed to keep us alive and do no harm. The Hippocratic Oath, penned a whopping 2,500 years ago, says,
“I will use treatments for the benefit of the ill in accordance with my ability and my judgement, but from what is to their harm and injustice, I will keep them.“
The Hippocratic Oath,
Yet, a review released on Wednesday found that over 450 patients at Gosport War Memorial Hospital died earlier than they should have after being given strong painkillers in the wrong way.
Who was the doctor speeding up the end for her patients?
Enter Dr Jane Ann Barton, now 70, who graduated from Oxford University with a Bachelor of Medicine in 1972. She became a GP, worked at Forton Medical Centre in Gosport, and also spent five sessions a week as a clinical assistant caring for older people at Gosport War Memorial Hospital. She started there on 1 May 1988 and resigned on 5 July 2000.
At the hospital, she was in charge of the care for people in 44 beds. Over her 12 years there, she signed 854 death certificates. According to a 2003 review, 94% of her patients received opiates, but there was hardly any sign of following the three-step pain relief process used in palliative care—non-opiate, weak opiate, then strong opiate.
Hospital drugs sent 456 patients to the grave
The NHS took some serious criticism for how the deaths at Gosport were handled. People rightly wanted answers after the hospital deaths made headlines.
Dr Barton’s patients were usually moved from other hospitals after big surgeries or serious illnesses. They needed more support than a regular nursing home could give, so they ended up at Gosport. Some were there for long-term care, like those with terminal cancer, while others came in for rehab after a stroke or hip fracture.
“When patients died after a fracture, Dr. Barton wrote “bronchopneumonia” on the death certificate instead, so odd spikes in deaths went unnoticed. That wasn’t a small detail—it let a big problem slide under the radar.”
Barton’s paperwork told a bleak story
Dr Barton quit the hospital job in 2000 but carried on as a GP. A 2003 review of patient deaths at Gosport looked at her notes and found she usually took a passive approach to care—focusing on comfort instead of recovery, even for people with fixable injuries! Some records had blunt instructions to nurses on the day people arrived: “Please make comfortable.” That’s usually code for, “Give them loads of painkillers.”
In quite a few cases, there’s no record of a proper pain check before handing out heavy-duty drugs. In one set of notes, Dr Barton scribbled, “[The patient] is frightened and agitated and appears to be in pain. Suggest transdermal analgesia despite no obvious clinical justification!! Dr Lord to countersign. I am happy for nursing staff to confirm death.”
Investigations and consequences
In 2010, the General Medical Council found Dr Barton guilty of serious professional misconduct and putting patients at risk of early death. Oddly enough, she kept her licence to practise, with the panel pointing to a decade of safe GP work and 200 letters of support in her defence. They slapped her with 11 conditions, including a three-year ban on injecting opiates.
After the ruling, Dr Barton said, “Throughout my career I have tried to do my very best for all my patients and have had only their interests and wellbeing at heart.” She retired soon after, giving up her GMC registration on 9 March 2011.
When people trust doctors with their lives, they expect care, not shortcuts. This story is a warning: sloppy systems and loose rules can have deadly consequences, especially when powerful drugs are involved.
