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Midwives have spoken of a "tense" atmosphere and "culture issues" on a ward where a baby girl who suffered brain damage and died 33 days later was born.
The comments came on the second day of an inquest into the death of Amelia Amber Sweetpea Clyde-Smith, who was born in Jersey's General Hospital in 2018.
This was investigated at the time by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which found there had been “missed opportunities”, prompting an apology from senior health officials, who admitted her death was “probably” avoidable.
The inquest, which began on Monday 8 April and is due to last until Friday 12 April, previously heard that Ewelina Clyde-Smith’s pregnancy had progressed well until her waters broke around two weeks before her due date, after which she came to the Hospital with her husband, Dominic. Her time in hospital was described by one midwife on the first day of the inquest as "distressing".
After their daughter was born, Amelia was transported to the UK in order to receive specialist care but later died.
On the second day of the inquest yesterday, it was explained how, how the night before Mrs Clyde-Smith arrived in hospital, labour ward co-ordinator Catherine Richardson had left the hospital and left someone who was not a co-ordinator in charge of a ward containing high-risk patients.
Lee-Ann Davies Storer, one of the midwives working on the maternity ward that night, described how the incident had affected the team.
She told the inquest that at the time of writing a statement for the Health Department's Serious Incident review, “conversations had happened with various management that the events of the night before weren’t relevant to the night in question”.
Despite not mentioning the fact Ms Richardson left the ward in the statement she wrote in 2018, she made a contemporaneous note of the incident when she was at home. She then supplied this to the inquest.
“I felt like it [Ms Richardson’s departure from the ward] had an impact on that [following] night shift and that is why I wanted to remember it,” she explained.
Describing the next night, when Amelia was born, Ms Davies Storer told the inquest: “The atmosphere was quite difficult at the start of the shift.
“It was very tense. It was like an elephant in the room.”
But the team got on with their work, she said.
Asked by the Relief Coroner why she had not included this episode previously, despite writing that it was “important to raise this”, she said she had “felt guilty” ever since she gave her statement in 2018.
She said: “I believe it had an impact on that night shift.
“That’s something that stayed with me for years and years and years.”
She continued: “I think we all felt that her leaving shouldn’t have happened.”
Another midwife who had been on shift that night, Natasha Richards, described how she, too, had sought advice from colleagues when writing her statement, and was told to stick to the facts and not include how she had been feeling.
The inquest also heard that on-call consultants had, at times, been “stroppy” about being called in.
Miss Richards told the inquest: “That was part of the culture issues as well.
“At the time… consultants weren’t very happy to be contacted at night.
“There were occasions when they were stroppy at being contacted.”
Midwife asked not to mention incident the night before, baby inquest told
Inquest opens into death of baby girl in hospital
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