THE “furious” father of a six-week-old baby claims they were prescribed a potentially fatal dosage of drugs meant to treat his son - 15 times the amount it should have been.
On March 6, Heather Jennings gave birth to her son Jadon after a less than straightforward experience.
Her husband Gareth says the staff at Royal Bolton misjudged the state of her labour multiple times, with Jadon ultimately being delivered using forceps and Heather requiring “god knows how many stitches".”
In the weeks that followed, Mr Jennings claims that hospital staff initially thought that Jadon had contracted a bug due to cross-contamination, then changed their mind to treat him for meningitis on an IV for two weeks, before performing another U-turn back to the original diagnosis of the bug.
On Thursday April 14, Jadon was prescribed Clindamycin by the hospital, and his parents were told to administer orally four times a day, at a dosage of 15ml each time – three 5ml spoonfuls.
Jadon was due to start the course of treatment the following day, however, concerned by the quoted dosage of the prescription, the Farnworth couple asked their community nurse their opinion.
Mr Jennings described how the nurse had worriedly asked if they had already started Jadon on the drugs, explaining that if they had gone ahead the consequences would have been “catastrophic".
Mr Jennings said: “I called the community nurse to come grab his stuff and if he hadn’t come, we’d have started on the medication, and he would have been dead by the end of the week.’”
Mother and baby are now both recovering fine, but things could have ended much worse were it not for the nurse pointing out the mistake.
Mr Jennings said: “They got loads of things wrong. It’s been a farce.
“I am not going back to that hospital now. He could be half-dead, and I’d take him to Salford instead.
“Someone needs picking up on this. They need to be retrained or something.
“I’m furious.”
Dr Francis Andrews, medical director at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, said: “I'm sorry that the Jennings family received incorrect advice about their medication and know that it must have been really concerning.
“We are working with them to fully understand their concerns around the care they have received as a family, so that we can establish any learning, and prevent anything similar happening in the future.”
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