Key Summary
- Severe specialist shortage causing long postmortem delays for families
- Many regions have no paediatric/perinatal pathologists and vacancies are high
- Experts urge urgent action to fix services and cut agonising waits
The shortage of paediatric and perinatal pathologists is causing long delays in postmortems of babies and children, and grieving families have to undergo a harrowing wait for a closure, says a media report.
A Royal College of Pathologists report warns that this shortage has led to a ‘collapse’ of services in some parts of the UK, and the bodies of babies and children have to be taken elsewhere for examination, The Guardian reports.
Dr Clair Evans, the chair of the college’s advisory committee, said one in five families are now waiting six months or more, and some longer than 12 months.
A workforce audit published by the college stated that there are no paediatric and perinatal pathologists working in Northern Ireland or in the south-west or Midlands in England.
The bodies of dead children from Northern Ireland are often brought to Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool.
It also found that 37 percent of consultant posts in the UK are lying vacant, and out of the 52 paediatric and perinatal consultants in the UK, 13 are due to retire in the next five years.
Only 13 resident doctors are in training to become consultants in the specialty.
Dr Clea Harmer, the chief executive of the baby loss charity Sands, said ministers and NHS bosses need to do more to “close the agonising gap between a baby dying and parents finding out why it happened”.
Other than performing postmortems, paediatric and perinatal pathologists also help to diagnose and treat sick children.
