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An independent inquiry is to take place into the children’s heart unit at Bristol Children’s Hospital.

The Medical Director of NHS England, Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, said that leading healthcare ethics lawyer Sir Ian Kennedy had agreed in principle to conduct the inquiry into incidences of poor care and neglect at the children’s heart unit.

The announcement follows a meeting with the families of children who were treated at the heart unit at Bristol Children’s Hospital and received substandard care. Some of the children and babies died as a result of the negligent care they received.

Last year it was reported some of the families were considering legal action against the hospital trust. Parents had been calling for an inquiry into what happened at the heart unit, which they said offered “chronically low standards” of care and “inept care”. It is thought 10 of the families whose children received poor care at the heart unit were considering legal action against the hospital trust.

Parents have also called some of the staff at the unit “incompetent” – and in one case, the parents of a young boy who died after heart failure said that he had been neglected to the point he had suffered a cardiac arrest which could have been prevented.

Sean Turner died in March 2012 after suffering a brain haemorrhage following a cardiac arrest. An inquest in January this year heard that Sean’s parents had begged hospital staff at the heart unit to help their son who had undergone corrective heart surgery at the hospital, from which he was expected to recover completely.

In April 2012, another youngster also died at the heart unit after his heart stopped for 43 minutes before staff resuscitated him and carried out exploratory surgery on him. However, the seven-year-old – Luke Jenkins – died the following day. The hospital admitted that his death occurred partly because the duty surgeon had to be summoned from home on the Good Friday bank holiday.

Parents also allege that wards their children were treated on were dirty – and junior staff and emergency staff were unable to locate vital equipment when needed, or were unsure how to use it.

Parents say that hospital claimed that this was because cardiac arrest on the heart unit ward was such a rare event.

Prof Sir Bruce Keogh said in a statement:

“We have today had a very important meeting with the families of children who died at Bristol. My deputy medical director Mike Bewick and I have listened with great care to their concerns about the care their children received.

"I would like to thank them for the dignified and powerful way they have talked to us. We collectively concluded that the most effective course of action might be to put in place an independent review of the care at the Trust's paediatric cardiac unit.

"It was clear that, in the interests of everyone, such a review would need to be independent of the NHS.

“It must be led by the families involved – it must be their review.”

The lawyer named as chair of the review, Sir Ian Kennedy, is an expert in healthcare law and ethics.

University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust welcomed the news of the inquiry – and the trust’s acting chief executive Deborah Lee said that involving the families in shaping the review was “very positive”.

She added that a recent audit had found 98% of families questioned had found care at the hospital “good” or “very good”:

“It saddens me greatly that we have a group of families that believe we have let them down and we will continue to do our utmost to ensure that no other family experiences care in our services in the way that these families did.”

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