Hospital reprimanded over use of WhatsApp rather than doctor’s attendance

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Parents of a premature baby who died at five days old have discovered that vital data which monitored his heartbeat prior to his birth was sent via WhatsApp to the on-call NHS consultant, after they failed to see the expectant mother in person.

The parents have spoken of how “shocked, hurt and let down” they are by the revelation that the social media platform was used to communicate their unborn son’s CTG heart monitoring readings, rather than the consultant attending – even though the senior obstetrician was only minutes away within the hospital site.

The mother had experienced a difficult pregnancy, with ongoing and worsening bleeding leading to ten previous visits to Borders General Hospital – but the couple were repeatedly assured there was nothing to worry about.

Their son was born in August 2022 at 31 weeks’ gestation, and sadly passed away five days later. Despite the many previous visits to hospital and expressions of concern, in addition to the baby’s prematurity, the mother was not transferred to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh for the birth - even though Borders does not have a neonatal intensive care unit.

An investigation by NHS Borders has since uncovered the use of WhatsApp rather than the consultant seeing the expectant mother in person, highlighting that concerns around the birth “warranted attendance from the obstetric consultant in person”.

The Significant Adverse Event Review (SAER) by the Trust also established that, once the consultant did arrive when the woman was preparing to give birth, they requested a second ultrasound – incurring a further delay of nine minutes in the baby being delivered.

Following their investigation, NHS Borders apologised to the family.

A complaint was made to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which has been upheld as an infringement of data protection law. The ICO found that NHS Borders failed to keep personal data secure and have advised NHS Borders that they should take a number of measures to consider the risks relating to personal data and to ensure data security.

“We have found this really shocking. We didn’t know anything about a consultant who should have been present until we read the SAER report. It has been pretty devastating to find this out,” says the mother, who is from the Borders area.

“Aside from the fact they’re using WhatsApp anyway, which is definitely not the way medical information should be shared between professionals, I know from doing personal training sessions in this hospital previously how bad the phone signal and WiFi are. It’s unbelievable to think they were sending such vital information this way.”

“You put your trust in the professionals and presume that the right people are in the right place at the right time,” says her husband.

“While the midwives were always helpful and concerned, more senior staff were less so. We had no idea the consultant who should have been here, who was on the site and only minutes’ walk away, was being sent critical live data by WhatsApp, and that there was this internal battle going on in trying to get them to come and assess my wife in person. We knew nothing about this at the time, and it was very hard to read in the SAER report.

“We are so let down by this. We know the consultant was supposed to be close by, just across a car park from where we were, yet wouldn’t come to see us or even accept information by email, only by WhatsApp. This cannot be allowed to happen again to any other family.”

A review of maternity services at NHS Borders is currently being carried out by Health Improvement Scotland, which has been welcomed by the couple.

“We do not want any other family to be in the position we are in, where you have been through so much then have to find details like this out in a report. We want things to change, and we want people to receive the care they need, when they need it,” says the bereaved mother.

“We are doing this for our son and other mums and dads. We want to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

How Slater and Gordon helped

The family are working with medical negligence specialists at Slater and Gordon to investigate their case.

Sarah McWhirter, Principal Lawyer based in Scotland, says: “The loss of their son has of course been utterly devastating for our clients, but then to find out that information at such a critical point was being conveyed by WhatsApp, rather than an in-person assessment, has understandably been shocking.

“WhatsApp is absolutely not an appropriate means of communication between medical professionals in any circumstances and is particularly unacceptable in the case of an unborn baby’s heartbeat being monitored.

“While nothing can change the reality for this family, we commend them for speaking out in the hope that this will not happen to anyone else.”

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