Summary
Handling the News of Organ Retention from
September 1999
57. Alder Hey and the University
should have retained a paediatric pathologist to head a team to
catalogue the retained organs and fragments in September 1999. This
exercise would have revealed the impossibility of accounting accurately
for all the organs retained because of poor record keeping and unrecorded
research access to the organs. Neither Alder Hey nor the University
will ever be able accurately to tell parents what happened to every
organ of every child who died between 1988 and 1995. The University
has never accepted its responsibility in the matter and has left
Alder Hey to make a sequence of mistakes. These include four or
five attempts to provide parents with accurate information relating
to organ retention, not learning from and compounding mistakes made
in each previous attempt. The cerebellum collection and the eye
collection should have been identified and revealed earlier by both
Alder Hey and the University.
58. Alder Hey failed to make
sufficient provision for face to face communication of the news
of organ retention to parents. They failed to provide suitable advice,
counselling and support necessary to affected families. Even though
Alder Hey were faced with a unique situation in terms of the amount
and condition of organs at Myrtle Street, there was a lack of proper
management which resulted in the dripfeeding of information to parents
and the provision of information which was frequently inaccurate.
No proper attempt at cataloguing was carried out until June 2000.
The result was that each piece of news given to parents had the
cumulative effect of exacerbating their reaction. From the outset
they should have retained a Consultant Psychologist to assist in
devising the best method for approaching parents affected.
