One Week with John Gulliver - GOSH! That’s no way to treat a doctor - Three years on from Dr Kim Holt's suspension from Great Ormond Street Hospital

Published: 16 April 2010
by JOHN GULLIVER

SOMEONE took a decision at the famous Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), in Bloomsbury, to suspend a senior pediatrician, Dr Kim Holt, from her post three years ago.

We know why the good doctor was suspended on full pay. But who ticked off her name on the suspension list?

You would think it would be easy to find out. After all, the hospital is a public institution, funded by taxpayers and, therefore, whoever took that fateful decision is on the public payroll.

I asked the hospital yesterday (Wednesday) to simply tell me who took the decision. But I may as well have been asking the hospital’s officials to jump in the Thames for all the notice they took of me.

The hospital “is not in a position to discuss the case publicly,” I was told.

The mystery of Dr Kim Holt’s disappearance from public view would intrigue any private eye.

These are the facts: Dr Holt, a specialist of 25 years  experience, started working in Haringey in a children’s department run by GOSH in 2004.

Two years later she started writing to her superiors complaining about the loss of staff, and the risk of a possible “disaster” at the child protection service in Haringey if more doctors were not attached to the department. This was a matter of “public interest” and should be “investigated”, argued Dr Holt. 

As readers will know, such a “disaster” occurred when a locum pediatrician was called in to see Baby P and made a mess of her examination. Two days after the examination Baby P died.

Was Dr Kim Holt patted on the back for her whistle-blowing?

No, someone, or a committee at GOSH, felt offended by Dr Holt’s interference – and suspended her.

At first, Dr Holt, who lives in Muswell Hill, was suspended on full pay; later, she was seconded to another post at the hospital. 

I suppose GOSH form fillers felt that they couldn’t keep on paying Dr Holt to stay at home for ever, so they slipped her into a post at the hospital just to keep her on the books, as it were.

Assuming Dr Holt’s annual salary was about  £80,000, she must have cost the hospital nearly £200,000 before they gave her some work to do.

A lot of people are mad about the case.

Even NHS London, the government appointed body that runs the health service in London, weren’t happy.

In December, they rapped GOSH over the knuckles, and, effectively, said Dr Holt should be reinstated. But GOSH, four months later, are still undecided about the good doctor’s future.

An online petition supporting Dr Holt has been signed by 2,000 people.

I would like to be able to tell you what Dr Holt thinks of the awful way she has been treated but she has had to accept a gagging order as negotiations proceed on her reinstatement.

Frank Dobson, who is campaigning for a return to the Commons as MP for Holborn and St Pancras, introduced measures to protect whistle-blowers when he was Health Secretary in 1997.

He must be angry, too, that all his good work is being ignored by GOSH.

The hospital is not any kind of run-of-the-mill institution – it is a Trust, which means it has special powers compared to ordinary hospitals.

Its powers are so special it seems to be a law unto itself.

I can’t tell readers who suspended our gallant whistle-blower but I am pretty sure the deed was done by managers, highly paid civil servants, and that none of the doctors at GOSH played any part in it.

Presumably, the hospital’s chief executive Dr Jane Collins would be aware of the case but I cannot say for certain because GOSH has pulled the curtains down.

Am I being naïve if I believe that doctors, nurses, porters and other lower managerial staff, should be running hospitals and not managers in executive positions? But there I go again – day-dreaming about who should run our public institutions that are funded from taxes paid by the poor mutts like our readers!

‘Tooling up’ for Old Labour

AS an admirer of that tough cookie from Glasgow, I wasn’t entirely surprised when a colleague heard Baroness Helena Kennedy describe on Monday how she and Jeremy Corbyn had broken into a broom cupboard in the Commons to put up a plaque in honour of the suffragette Emily Davidson.

She told a meeting in Archway that Emily Davidson had locked herself in the cupboard in 1911 in order to claim her address was the Houses of Parliament.

“We went in one night with a tool kit, drill and plaque which said this is where Emily Davidson spent the night and there it hangs in the broom cupboard, and it’s still there,” Helena told an amused audience.

Nor does it surprise me that outspoken Helena is backing left-winger Corbyn in his attempt to win North Islington.

Once a supporter of Tony Blair, Helena, who lives in Belsize Park, quickly saw through that smooth operator and is now, clearly, going back to her Old Labour roots.

De Profundis, at the loss of a great actor

A FUNERAL of one of the great figures in the theatre took place on Monday at the actors’ church, St Paul’s in Covent Garden.

Corin Redgrave could be said to have been in his prime though he died at the age of 70.

But Corin claimed – and I agreed with him – that for 20 years he had been blacklisted by the BBC for his left-wing political activity.

If he had had a straight run in his career he would have risen to even greater heights, I believe.

I was fortunate to see his moving performance as Oscar Wilde in an adaptation of the writer’s essay, De Profundis, in a one-man show three years ago at the Theatro Technis theatre in Camden Town.

I was entranced by Corin’s performance and sensed he understood the tortured and persecuted Wilde: Hadn’t he been sidelined himself by the Establishment over many years?

A quiet, unassuming man, I wasn’t aware until I spoke to the theatre’s director, George Eugeniou, that Corin hadn’t charged for his performance but insisted that all the takings went to a charity run by the actors’ union, Equity.

I suppose he will be remembered for his performance as King Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and his vignettes in the films Four Weddings and a Funeral and In the Name of the Father, but I will remember chatting to that quiet man with so much talent at Theatro Technis.

‘Sorry Barack, I’ve got to say bye to June!’

HE spent this week with Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton in Washington, discussing how to cut nuclear arms, and then flew home to get back on the election campaign trail.