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'Every time I close my eyes, he is with me': A former nurse on life after a manslaughter conviction
death in February 2011, 11 hours after being admitted to hospital, not only devastated the lives of Nicola and her husband Victor, but unleashed a controversial legal case that spanned the following decade.Accused of making a string of medical errors, Jack’s paediatrician, Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba, and his nurse, Isabel Amaro – both of whom had held unblemished careers in the medical profession – were charged with manslaughter by gross negligence.They were convicted after a four-week trial at Nottingham Crown Court in November 2015 and both given two-year suspended prison sentences (a second nurse, Theresa Taylor, was cleared). Dr Bawa-Garba was found to have made mistakes from failing to act on Jack’s abnormal blood tests to mistaking him with another patient under a do-not-resuscitate order. Amaro had failed to keep accurate records of Jack’s blood pressure, temperature and fluid input-output, and to escalate concerns appropriately.Yet the verdict caused uproar among doctors, who claimed Dr Bawa-Garba had been scapegoated for multiple failings within a beleaguered NHS – that her working environment was one of intolerable pressure in which mistakes were bound to happen.