Rajkiran Arhestey, instructed by Andrea Wadden and James Bell of Kingsley Napley, represented the family of ZA, a 3-year-old child who died hours after attending A&E with a high temperature. The Senior Coroner of Essex, Lincoln Brookes concluded the 2-day inquest this week, finding that within an hour of arrival at the hospital, ZA should have been commenced upon, and treated according to, the sepsis pathway and, had this occurred, her death would likely have been prevented.
The Trust also made a number of admissions prior to the inquest, admitting that there were failures in assessing ZA’s Children’s Early Warning Tool (CEWT) score correctly, failures in following the observation policy, a lack of review by an appropriately senior clinician while ZA was in the Emergency Department, a failure to recognise how sick ZA was and to implement the sepsis pathway, and a delay in prescribing and administering antibiotics.
