By SAURABH JHA

This is the second part of Dr. Jha’s conversation with Dr. Jonathan Cusack, who was the former supervisor and mentor of Dr. Bawa-Garba, a pediatrician convicted of manslaughter of fetal sepsis in Jack Adcock. Read the first part of this series here.

Dr. Jonathan Cusack versus the General Medical Council

I spoke with Dr. Jonathan Cusack, consultant neonatologist at Leicester Royal Infirmary (LRI), and former supervisor and mentor of Dr. Bawa-Garba, the trainee pediatrician convicted of manslaughter for delayed diagnosis of fatal sepsis in Jack Adcock, a six-year-old boy with Down’s syndrome. We had drinks at The George, pub opposite the Royal Courts of Justice.

In the first part of the interview we discussed the events on Friday February 18^th, 2011, the day of Jack presented to LRI. In the second part of the interview we talk about the events after fatal Friday – how the crown prosecution service got involved, the trial, the manslaughter charge, the tribunal and the General Medical Council.

The Role of Dr. O’Riordan

Saurabh Jha (SJ): After Jack’s death what was Dr. Bawa-Garba’s immediate reaction?

Jonathan Cusack (JC): I think it’s one of those moments one neither forgets nor recalls. I imagine the most overwhelming feeling was one of incredulity. How and why did Jack decompensate? It’d have struck her as physiologically implausible. Though she was experiencing that grief familiar to all pediatricians when a child dies, she was trying to understand why. She didn’t know that he died from Group A Streptococcal septicemia, then.

By SAURABH JHA

After Dr. Hadiza Bawa-Garba was convicted for manslaughter for delayed diagnosis of fatal sepsis in Jack Adcock, a six-year-old boy who presented to Leicester Royal Infirmary with diarrhea and vomiting, she was referred to the Medical Practitioners Tribunal (MPT). The General Medical Council (GMC) is the professional regulatory body for physicians. But the MPT determines whether a physician is fit to practice. Though the tribunal is nested within the GMC and therefore within an earshot of its opinions, it is a decision-making body which is theoretically independent of the GMC.

The tribunal met in 2017, 6 years after Jack’s death, to decide whether Dr. Bawa-Garba, after the manslaughter conviction, should be allowed to practice medicine again, whether she should be suspended for a year, or her name be permanently erased (“struck off”) from the medical register. The GMC wanted Dr. Bawa-Garba to be struck off from the medical register because they felt that her care of Jack fell so short of the expected standard, that her return to practice would not only endanger patients but undermine public confidence in the medical profession. The GMC expected the MPT to agree with its uncompromising stance, and the MPT might well have, and probably would have, but for the efforts of Dr. Jonathan Cusack, a consultant neonatologist at Leicester Royal Infirmary (LRI), and a former supervisor and mentor of Dr. Bawa-Garba’s.

Cusack is unassuming even by British standards. You will not find him on social media or taking selfies. A soft-spoken northerner with a steely nerve and an uncompromising deference to facts, Cusack is both old-school and new-school. He has that unassailable integrity which is immeasurable but instantly recognizable. But he’s also savvy – and understands the British medical, regulatory and legal systems inside out. If Dr. Bawa-Garba’s license is reinstated, Cusack’s role would be akin to that of the code breakers in the Second World War. Dr. Bawa-Garba trusts him implicitly. Her legal team can’t function without him.

Cusack was loyally involved in both the rehabilitation of Dr. Bawa-Garba’s clinical confidence after Jack’s death, and her trial. I met him after the first day’s appeal hearing in the pub opposite the Courts of Justice. Originally hesitant to speak to me, being the ostentatious expat Brit that I am, he agreed to an interview on the condition that I not make too much of a song and dance about his contribution. I promised that I wouldn’t. I lied.

Continue reading…