A family who spent 20 hours waiting to be updated on the condition of their newborn child are asking why the hospital does not have a full time paediatrician on its maternity ward.

Father, Sammy Harman, said he and his wife were left in the dark after being told daughter Olivia had been born with a heart murmur.

After challenging Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow over social media, Mr Harman is set to meet with an NHS operations manager to discuss the issue. 

Here is his first-hand account: 

 

"On February 3 my partner went into Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow to give birth.

Our daughter, Olivia, was born at 00:42 on the 4th; initially all seemed perfectly fine until the paediatrician noticed a slight heart murmur which needed to be monitored over the next 12 hours.

Then 20 hours later there was still no sign of the paediatrician and no update on our daughters heart murmur, concerns started to grow.

Olivia wasn’t allowed home due to the murmur, yet there was nobody qualified to give an update on her condition. Was her heart ok? Nobody knew. She was just left.

Why was this? Because at 9am a paediatrician from an agency called in sick and no cover was arranged, in the afternoon when an attempt to arrange cover was made, the agency had no paediatricians.

Why did it take so long to attempt to arrange cover? In short a complete maternity ward was left without a paediatrician.

At 20:00 a paediatrician appeared, listened to Olivia’s heart and gave her the all clear to leave. The medical staff at Princess Alexandra are fantastic; the same cannot be said for the people running the hospital.

I then began tweeting about what had happened on Twitter.

As soon as the management realised that Tweets had been put out and calls had been made to the local MP then things started to happen.

We have a meeting in a couple of weeks with the Operations Manager, I am fully expecting to be fed a load of rubbish.

I want to know why there are no fulltime paediatricians for a Maternity Ward, why they use agency, why cover was not arranged immediately and why the management are not listening to the midwives when they are saying that the radiators are a risk to newborns?

I want to know what is going to be done to prevent this from happening again, I wont accept their words, I want to see proof that a process is put in place to prevent this."

 

Responding to Mr Harman's story, a spokesman for the hospital said: 

"We are currently in the process of recruiting a full time, substantive consultant to the unit.   

While not always staffed by permanent consultants, the unit does have 24 hour consultant cover and we took immediate steps to cover the locum who was unable to work. 

This entailed consultants elsewhere in the hospital being deployed to the maternity unit and at no point was it understaffed or unsafe.   

We are extremely sorry that the Harmans had to wait longer than normal for reassurance regarding their new baby daughter’s health, but this was so that medical staff could attend to a difficult emergency birth on the unit. 

At no point was Olivia’s health or safety put at risk as a result of this delay. 

We have apologised to the family and have invited them to meet with senior staff to listen to their concerns and, hopefully, to provide further reassurance."

 

In a new series on the NHS, the Guardian will feature experiences of patients, their families and staff of treatment provided across east London and west Essex. As A&Es continue to struggle with demand and politicians argue over the future of healthcare, we will publish first-hand accounts, features and news stories on the latest developments. We want to hear from you if you have something to say about your local hospital, GP surgery, or clinic. Click here for contact details of reporters covering your area. Alternatively,you can submit a story here.