QMH Blames Inexperience For Baby's Slide Into Coma

A Queen Mary Hospital investigation has blamed inexperienced staff for allowing a baby girl to fall into a coma after surgery in December.

It said they were overly reliant on monitoring equipment and failed to realise her condition was deteriorating.

Her parents had complained that staff were busy with monitoring equipment instead of resuscitating their daughter after her heart stopped.

They were also upset that the girl was not put in the intensive care unit. However the report said the ward admission decision complied with international practice.

The head of Queen Mary Hospital, Dr Luk Che-chung, says another committee will look into if anyone should be held responsible and his hospital will work on suggestions in the report.

"Situation like that will fluctuate all the time, because in a ward it's quite dynamic. Sometimes more patients, sometimes less patients, some are stable, some patients are downhill.

"So the ward in-charge needs to make a decision based on the actual situation, to arrange the nurses on duty as to who should be looking after which patient, and that is the part that we would like the ward management to improve.

"And on the competence side we would like to strengthen all the nurses training on two aspects: one is how they monitor patients, and the other is when patients deteriorate, how they take urgent action."

The baby girl is now in stable condition at the hospital.