The nurse who blew the whistle on Dr Jayant Patel in 2005 says it will “take another crisis to really get in and fix what’s going on now”.
Toni Hoffman was the nurse unit manager of the intensive care unit at Bundaberg Base Hospital during Patel’s two-year tenure as Director of Surgery at the hospital. On a stormy Friday evening in March 2005, Hoffman met member of parliament Rob Messenger to beg for help. Her 14 previous attempts to report concerns about Patel through official channels had fallen on deaf ears.
On March 22, 2005, Messenger used parliamentary privilege to read into the parliamentary record parts of a letter of complaint Hoffman had penned to the district manager for Bundaberg in late 2004. Three weeks later, journalist Hedley Thomas reported on Patel’s previously unknown extensive disciplinary history in the United States, which he uncovered through a Google search.
In late 2005, the Queensland Public Hospitals Commission of Inquiry found that 13 patients died because of Patel’s negligence, with many other surviving patients suffering adverse outcomes. The inquiry referred evidence to police for investigation. Patel eventually faced charges for criminal medical negligence arising out of surgery he performed on four patients, three of whom died.
The penultimate episode of The Australian’s investigative podcast series Sick To Death, released last week, tracks the twists and turns in the pursuit of justice from 2007 to 2011.
The final episode, out now, picks...
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