My daughter did the referral. She’s what’s called the main complainant because I was too ill.

So I went in, briefly met the barrister who was working for the GMC. I’d asked to see him last year but they wouldn’t let me. They said, “No, you’re just a witness. Why would you wanna talk to him?” And I said, “To make sure that he’s gonna ask the right questions.” And they said, “No, it’s nothing to do with you. You’re just the witness. We’re the prosecution. And as it turns out, he didn’t ask the right questions anyway.

INTERVIEWER: Did you know you were going to sit and watch the whole tribunal once you’d given your evidence?

We made a conscious decision to do that. But the GMC will only pay for the days that you’re there to give evidence, and bearing in mind we live in [TOWN], and we had to get to [TOWN] and stay in a hotel. The GMC will only pay for the one night – for you to stay overnight, go to the tribunal. They might pay a second night ’cause they say “Sometimes we might have to call you back for the next day, but once you’re dismissed, that’s it, we’ll only pay for those two nights.” And of course trying to get accommodation in [TOWN]… We stayed at the – you might know it – the [HOTEL].

INTERVIEWER: Right.

P: So we stayed there. 150 quid a night. And the tribunal was over 2 weeks.

And things like as well, before the tribunal I said, when this girl was trying to order us a hotel, and I said, “Well, is the doctor staying in that hotel?”

INTERVIEWER: Mm.

P: ‘Cause she had to book him a hotel as well presumably. And she goes, “Oh, I don’t know.” She goes, “Why, would that be a problem?” And I said, “Well, it might be interesting over breakfast with all that cutlery lying around” is the way I put it. [Interviewer laughs] And she went, “Oh, OK. Well, we’ll find out where he’s staying then and make sure we’re not gonna put in the same place.” And she actually said, “We’ve never had anybody ask that before.”

INTERVIEWER: Hmm.

P: And you go, “What?”

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

P: This guy has ruined my life! And you’re expecting me to meet him in breakfast perhaps before a tribunal, and I haven’t seen him since the day he mutilated me. And you’re gonna go, “Oh, is that a problem?” Er… just a lot!

You go in. The first thing they do is say “How are you?” blah blah, and they introduce themselves. There’s three members of the panel, three ladies. They introduced themselves. And then they go… there’s a load of paperwork in front of you and there’s the oath. You talk about the oath. You know. “I swear by blah blah blah that I will do this, that and the other and I’ll tell the truth.” And then they pass it across to the prosecution barrister, who is my barrister if you like. Well, he’s not mine, he’s the GMC’s. He had no questions. Then they passed me over to the defendant’s barrister – the doctor’s barrister – who then quizzed me, rather stupidly, I thought. But he was more after a character assassination than anything else, which I thought was a bit underhand. This is a medical tribunal to actually see if somebody’s safe or not and prove it.

I mean I’m the one who had the bits taken out of me. I was asleep at the time.

And nobody in the tribunal went, “Excuse me, can I just stop you?” The panel should have said, “We’re scrubbing that. Why are you asking that?” But they didn’t.

And another thing going back to the tribunal, when I’d given my evidence, of course I could now sit in the public gallery. So I sat in the public gallery listening to all the rubbish. And then the doctor was being cross-examined, and when he came in to be cross-examined, he sat there, and he’s a good actor, I’ll give him that, and before they started to question, he said, “Can I just request of the panel that I talk to [NAME] in the gallery to apologise to him? Because I’ve tried to talk to him before and he won’t see me.” And the panel went “Yeah.” They didn’t ask me. My wife was sat next to me and she’s there going “No”. And I’m thinking, “OK.” I didn’t say anything, because that’s like a red rag to a bull. And the panel went, “Yes, [NAME], you can. I thought, “That’s a bit of a cheek. Surely you should’ve said something to me.”

INTERVIEWER: Mm.

P: So he turned round in the chair. Now I was 180 degrees directly behind him. He turned 90 degrees. He didn’t look at me. And he looked down on the ground. And he went, [wailing] “I’m very sorry, [NAME]. It’s been playing on my mind.” And he repeated the first two sentences of what he wrote in the Letter of Remorse. [wails] “I’ll never forget your name. I’m so sorry, I’ve ruined your life.” And then he never looked at me once in the eye, he looked down on the ground, and then he turned round to the panel and then he was going [wails] “I can’t speak anymore.” And they went, “Thank you very much, [NAME]. Are you alright? Do you want a drink? Do you want to compose yourself and then you carry on?” And they carried on.

How do you think I felt with that?

INTERVIEWER: Mm.

P: And I was not given the chance to reply. I was not given the chance to refuse, or anything. And I was in the public gallery, I wasn’t even part of the tribunal. And yet he was allowed to do that.

The GMC contacted us and said “Have you got any questions? Do you wanna have a chat?” And we went “Yeah”. And that’s when they came out and said “Well, just ’cause you’re not happy with the outcome then it doesn’t mean that we’re gonna do anything about it.” And then we started to go, “Well, what about this and what about that?” And they said, “Well, we can’t answer that, we can’t answer that. Due to complicated processes and legal matters, we have considered that.” And we said, “Have you considered this?” And “We can’t tell you, you’re just a witness.”

And we spent about an hour on the phone with [NAME] with [NAME] listening in in the background. It was me, my wife, my son and my daughter on a Teams type phone call, not a face to face. And they just kept coming back going, “We can’t answer that, we can’t answer that.” And she just said, “Well, it seems that we can’t answer any of your questions.” And of course that begs the question, what questions did you think we were gonna ask then?

I’m ready… well, I’m not ready ’cause actually mentally right now I’m at my rock bottom lowest. We’ve now got a private counsellor involved because of suicidal thoughts is basically what it is. I’ll be blunt with you. My wife’s here listening to this, she knows. Because of suicidal thoughts now. Because we’ve been fighting for three years, believing that there’s some sort of… justice is one word, but reasoned people to look at this fairly and come to a decision.

INTERVIEWER: What do you think might’ve helped at that stage?

P: More positive feedback from the GMC to say… but they would say “We’re not allowed to discuss it with you.”

INTERVIEWER: Mm.

P: But we felt like we were trying to lead them. And we did. But even now we’ve said we’re gonna complain, they’ve said, “What have we missed?” And they’re expecting us now… and we are, this is what we’re doing, we’re going back through all of our paperwork again that we’ve already sent them, and now we’re gonna pick out paragraphs and bits and go, “Well, he said this. But then he said that. That’s dishonest.

And I said “It’s nothing about being happy with the outcome. This is not about me. This is about the fact that the guy now is back there working unsupervised with a clean bill of health, and he did this to three people. And you’ve not picked up the problem at all.”

INTERVIEWER: So then you contacted the General Dental Council?

L: Yes. So, everything was new to me, I’d never done it before. So the experience is, I understood there was two stages basically to initiating a complaint, and it’s quite… what should I say… it was quite reassuring to find that at the stages, a fault was found, faults were found. Listed faults. And they seemed quite obvious faults really, on reflection. And those faults were identified because the General Dental Council shared the complaint with other clinicians for their independent opinion. The problem that I eventually foresaw is… well, I didn’t foresee until very late in the complaints process, is that once you’ve gone through the stages, the complaint was no longer your complaint. It was the case that the General Dental Council took the matter. And that, I think, is a very negative as a patient aspect to it all, because the independent clinicians had identified a whole list of errors or things that they disagreed with or should have been done, or hadn’t been done, this kind of thing. But when it got to the barrister level, when they appointed a barrister for the matter itself, a lot of those lists were crossed off without any consultation to me. And I felt that it was my complaint, and that should have been… I didn’t realise that it was taken out of my hand. So what’s the point of me complaining? I then became the witness. And all of this was new. I then became the witness. That is a completely different ballgame to putting in a complaint to becoming a witness. I was wondering where is the support for that transition? There didn’t seem to be any. It was all me dealing with it with the support of one of my daughters. Obviously family backup. But yes, it was quite a shock. I didn’t think it was openly shared in all of the documentation that I received, when it gets to stage whatever, I think they called it stage three, I don’t really know, that it’s not your complaint anymore.

And the last comment that’s written on my dental medical record, sorry if I referred to medical, it’s dental medical records. Patient left happy. I cannot think of any reason why a medical practitioner would write that if clearly I’d left the dental surgery distressed. And I think that was added after I’d called back and said “look, I’m still having this chest problem, this heart problem”. And I think he added that then. There was never an IT determination of when that actually was put onto their computer system.

I had my daughter, she stayed with me. Well, I was just asked questions. Obviously had to swear an oath, that kind of thing. And it was like a court hearing. What surprised me was that I felt that the barrister presenting the case was not actually that clued up. And I feel like maybe I could have done better, really.

 

One aspect they did say was “you can go now”, as soon as I’d done my witness presentation. And I thought, this is my complaint, why would I want to leave now and not want to know what’s going on? That’s not going to happen. And I felt that they felt that they had to keep accommodating us in separate rooms downstairs, in a kind of basement area. And they had to keep accommodating us to be separate from the barrister’s team and the dentist and his wife, which came across as a bit of an annoyance that we actually stayed.

INTERVIEWER: Was there anything about it that made it easier, or anything that you and your daughter did that you thought that helped?

L: Maybe just like texting people on our phones, communicating with the outside world. Bearing in mind that we were in a basement for hours. You can’t just walk out. Because I had to be there. In my mind, I had to be there 24/7, however long. We were just committed. I can’t even remember eating meals out. Lunch was quite tight, I’d say, so we did take food into our little room, which was quite different. During the hearings, because I said that they were tight on space, which surprises me, because like you said, the public can go in. We were put in with some of the recording people. So it was interesting having little chats with them.

 

L: My daughter… I didn’t expect her to come with me to be honest. But I was grateful when she did. And she said that… and I get emotional about this. She said “I won’t let you go through that ever again”. But… sorry.

INTERVIEWER: It’s alright.

L: But that’s what she said. “I wouldn’t let you do it on your own”. I think it stressed her a bit, because she’s got young children. And because my husband is self-employed, there’s an impact on our income if he’s not working, which isn’t taken into consideration.

We knew it was the last day. I think that the decision, from memory, the decision was given there and then, I think. I think you get called back in for the decision. And obviously, I felt that it… obviously, I didn’t want him struck off. I didn’t want him struck off at all. That’s not my incentive. I did want him to some more repercussions for what he did. He did get something like six months mentoring and having to fill a certain thing about his recording. Which, like I said, I felt a bit let down, because there was no questions about why he didn’t do an x-ray, all those kinds of things, which had been listed. Why he didn’t offer antibiotics. Why the clinicians hadn’t detailed all of this.

I felt a bit let down, because there was no questions about why he didn’t do an x-ray, all those kinds of things, which had been listed. Why he didn’t offer antibiotics. Why the clinicians hadn’t detailed all of this. There was no questions about that. But if a patient says to you that I’ve a medical problem, I’ve got heart palpitations and chest pain. You postpone what happens to the next person waiting to come in. You deal with the medical incident. And this is my argument, that’s happening. You cannot present a case that you only have 15 minutes for her, and she had to get out, which is how I was treated. And I think he should have had to answer for everything that was identified by other clinicians. What was the point really of consulting them if they don’t take up every aspect of what they think. That’s what I was thinking about.

His argument, which really annoyed me was that he claimed it was an emergency appointment, and therefore he was time-limited. And he also claimed that the time limitation was set by the company.

So, there’s all this complex stuff about the company and the individual dentist. I understand that appointments can be time limited. I understand that. We have it throughout GPs or wherever. But if a patient says to you that I’ve a medical problem, I’ve got heart palpitations and chest pain. You postpone what happens to the next person waiting to come in. You deal with the medical incident. And this is my argument, that’s happening. You cannot present a case that you only have 15 minutes for her, and she had to get out, which is how I was treated.

The first thing I think I need to do is just explain who I am and what I am very quickly. And my experience is that for the last 45 years I’ve been a professional investigator. So, from 1974 to 1990, I was a police officer in the [PLACE] Constabulary. Virtually for all my service apart from the first three years, I was on the CID. And I got to the rank of Detective Inspector, so I dealt with lots and lots—hundreds and hundreds of serious investigations. So, I was used to collaborating with people. So, I’m used to high-intensive investigations, which you have to—how do you collect the evidence? How do you treat witnesses? How do you present that evidence?

So, I first made a complaint to the GMC in March 2014. And I can still recall that when you had to go online, you had to do it, and you had 300 words to describe what your complaint was like. And that was it. So that’s what I did. I followed up with a further complaint for a second doctor in July 2014.

On the 30th of June 2015, I got a letter from the GMC to confirm the case examiners concluded that they did not—that it did not need to take any further action against the second doctor, Doctor X. I couldn’t understand it, because this was the doctor that failed to comply with the Section 117, which was a statutory duty written into [TRUST] policy documents and all the rest of it. So, I strongly disagreed, and I sent them back an email. I then decided that I’d have to continue with this. So, I then made a complaint to the PHSO regarding both doctors and what had happened to me—the behaviour of [TRUST].  Because it felt so outrageous. So, I provided a file of evidence for them as I would have done for any criminal prosecution that I’d done in the past. 28th of the 4th 2016, I thought the PHSO—they did a very good investigation.  They published the report and most of my complaints were upheld against both doctors. There was a clear duty by the second doctor, there was a duty of health and social services to provide aftercare to patients who’d been detained under Section Three of the Mental Health Act. And he didn’t do that.

I got an email from this [NAME] at GMC. He informed me that a tribunal hearing for Doctor [NAME], which was the first doctor, would take place on the 26th of October 2016. So, I thought, “Well that’s good news. That’s heading in the right direction.” So, as it got closer to that date, I thought, “Well this is strange, I’ve not been warned about coming to give evidence. I don’t understand what’s happening, really.” And what happened was, on the 20th of October 2016, I was advised by email from the GMC that my evidence in my son’s case would not form any part of the GMC case against Doctor [NAME].

I really couldn’t believe it. And this was six days before the hearing was due to happen. So, I challenged this. I said to them, “Why has this happened?” And they said, “There’s only a few days before the tribunal hearing. What’s happened is, after you made your initial complaint, the employers were contacted, and then they sent us some more information.” “So, what happened was we kept on with the employer’s side of things, and your part of the complaint was dropped.” This was never explained to me before this. I couldn’t believe it, and I said, “But this is a live case. This shows you what practice was like. It’s clinical practice.” “I don’t understand why you still can’t present it as being an example of how this clinician works with patients.” They said, “No, sorry, it’s too late. We’ve spoken to the solicitor. It’s not gonna be part of the hearing” and “Sorry”, and that’s about it.

So I just really—I felt just let down completely And they hadn’t even informed me. So I was beginning to become a little bit annoyed with the GMC.

And even when they did try and contact them, they just ignored me for months and months and months. Like the emails—you know, I’d send them an email and you get no reply. And I had about five or six different people firing at me from the GMC—who are you? Why are you contacting?  It was just, instead of one person, which is your port of call, if you had something going on, if it was a police matter, you’d have one person dealing with it—officer in the case. So I had to say to them, “Can you stop randomly sending me all this, because you’re quite clearly not all gathering any information and being aware of the whole picture?” “You’re just looking at your little bit and you’re not looking at something else.” And I couldn’t believe how unprofessional they were. For an organisation that is doing this all day every day. 

So what I did was, I actually found—so on the 30^th of the 5^th, 2017, I’d found online the Fitness to Practise Investigation Manual, which is 131 pages, and it was written by [NAME].

And this then set in all the things they should do, their system under SYBIL, all the things that they have to do. The way that it processes. And it was a minefield, really, because when I started to read this—they hadn’t done half of what they should have been doing in the process for me. I just couldn’t understand it. And the more I looked, the more I found that they just—they hadn’t followed any of the processes or procedures under this manual. So I found it quite interesting, and I sent them an email to explain what paragraphs and where I thought they’d not done it properly. And I think they then realised they had somebody that was gonna cause them a few problems and issues because not many people have found this document, or understood what was going on. So I then had a meeting on the 9^th of June. I went to the GMC and I saw [NAME]. Very nice young lady, sat down and explained it all and I explained what my issues and problems are. On the 15^th of the 6^th, a letter from [NAME], explanation of the changes made to the complaints process and my complaints against Doctor [NAME] and the second doctor and the GMC. So she was—I had a very nice meeting with them, they apologised, they said, “Yes, it wasn’t done very well, we should have kept in contact with you.”  “The second doctor, we’ve had an expert look at it and I’m afraid we can’t do anything apart from a president’s review.” So, I said to them, “Well look, the PHSO are contradicting your expert.”

So that was the end of that. That was the end of the complaints. They still refused to investigate. So, I made a complaint against the expert that they’d used to say, “Well I’d like to make a complaint against his behaviour and the fact that he’s a doctor—you’ve relied on him to provide you with evidence to show whether this doctor under investigation had done the right thing or not.” “And I’ve now shown to you, and you’ve agreed to it that his report was inadequate, unsound and didn’t stand up to scrutiny. You’ve now finally admitted that. So what are gonna do?” So they said, “No, we’re not doing anything.”

I was so incensed by their behaviour that I thought right, I know what I’ll do, I’m gonna write to the chair of the GMC. So on the 13^th of July 2020 I wrote a letter to Dame Clare Marx, who’s unfortunately since deceased, she was the chairperson of the GMC, to explain about my complaints and the way that the GMC had treated me.

It’s been a catastrophic, unprofessional, just dreadful experience of trying to make a complaint against two doctors. And what happened was the Chief Executive of the GMC intercepted this and said, “We will not be sending the letter to the Chair. I will discuss it with her and thanks very much and goodbye.” And that was the end of that. So, that’s really a whistlestop tour of what happened. And of course, all of this is just suppressed by the GMC. I can’t go anywhere else. The only thing I’m now considering to do is actually make a complaint to the Charity Commission. Because the Charity Commission says two things. And I can’t remember where I’ve put it now, but basically you can make a complaint against a charity if they’re not doing what it claims to do or they’re harming people or three other titles. So, my view is they’re actually harming people, because they’re not doing the job properly, and the second thing is, they’re not doing what they claim to do, which is protection of patients.

D: I didn’t want this to happen to anyone else. That was it, really. That was the bottom line. I didn’t want anyone else to have to go through this at all.

I was quite surprised when they asked me to go and be interviewed. But that was fair enough. I was quite pleased at that point, because they were obviously taking it seriously. I was quite happy to go and give my evidence to them. But I thought once I’d done that, it was going to be over fairly quickly. And I think that was within a few months of me making the complaint to them that they interviewed me.

I did have a contact at the General Dental Council. But she was more of an admin person really, not really an emotional support. The other thing with that was that the person kept changing. There were two or maybe three people by now. And they just disappeared. The first one went, and I was told that they were being replaced by someone else. But after the hearing, I heard from someone different. I didn’t really feel supported emotionally.

One of the things I found upsetting was that the dentist said “if she didn’t get the injury by you doing this, how did she get this injury”, and the dentist said “it must have been inappropriate aftercare. I don’t know what her home life is like”, indicating that I might be dirty, that I hadn’t looked after my health properly, which was unpleasant.

I would have liked to have attended the rest of the hearing, but I wasn’t given the option. I wasn’t told when the hearing resumed, I kept looking on the website. And I would have liked to have heard all of it.

And I got the result of it, pages and pages of it. I think there were 58 pages sent to me by email with their findings. A lot of it was redacted. So I couldn’t actually see it anyway.

But the whole episode, I still find quite upsetting thinking about it, because of remembering how he treated me and the pain and everything about it. I would have just liked it to be over quicker. I would also have liked to have been there and seen or heard everyone else’s evidence, whoever else they called, because I don’t even know that. I think that’s it really. They could have offered me some emotional support, but I don’t know if that’s available.

INTERVIEWER: So what would have liked to have happened? What would have made the process better for you?

D: What, the whole thing? If it had been quicker, because it took such a long time. Obviously, I wanted it to be over. I wanted to close that part of my life. In a way, it’s not actually closed because I am scarred. I have the scar on my lip still which I see every day. So it’s not over. It’s never going to be over for me. And I have difficulties going to the dentist.

Sarah: And it’s just like, it just felt like the NMC was a machine. So it’s like, “This is what we will do, this is our policy, we will get back to you in ‘X weeks’” and then they would never get back to it in the time they said, so then I’d be constantly chasing them to ask what was happening. It was really hard to get information about anything that was happening over the long, long time scale, because it was all personal to the registrant and secret because it was about the Trust and it couldn’t be public knowledge, and so even though it was my baby, I wasn’t allowed to know what was happening.

It just felt like it was torture, because it was prolonging my stillbirth, I guess, because you’re having to keep it at the front of your mind all the time. And I don’t know, the people who deal with the referrals and triage, they didn’t feel like real people. They felt like computer people, because they had no empathy and didn’t… They just didn’t act like normal human beings.

So it was kind of stalled for months and months. And so I’d sent a summary of what had happened and I’d sent documents that the Trust had sent to me. And then after nothing had happened and everyone was getting back to me when I got in touch with the lady who was at the Public Support Service who was attempting to set it up, I asked her why I couldn’t have just given my statement months ago, even though they weren’t yet investigating it, just so that I could have got my statement done while it was fresher in my mind, and so that I didn’t constantly have that on my mind as something that needed doing.

The bit where they communicated me was when they sent someone out to take my statement. And they did come to my house which was good. But it was weird, because it was just me saying the same things I’d already written down for them anyway.

And then they went away and typed it up and then they sent it back and then they’d obviously made lots of mistakes from what they’d written, so I had to correct it all, send it back again and agree that I was happy with it.

But what I thought at the time, that that was the statement that would be used at a hearing if it went to a hearing. And I didn’t realise that they pick bits out and redact bits and that it wouldn’t actually all go to the panel when I got to the hearing.

The NMC put us in a hotel with some other witnesses, and it was the barrister’s witnesses, and we hadn’t realised. And it was someone that I actually knew from a toddler group, and it turned out she was a midwife support worker, and she was the one who spoke to me on the phone the first time when I’d phoned up and asked to speak to a midwife. And I hadn’t even cottoned on that it had been her. So to suddenly see her in the hotel when it was someone from [CITY] that I’d spoken to in toddler groups. And then watching her give evidence. That shook me up quite a lot. That was very weird. It feels like there’s not a lot of thought that goes into it. Everyone’s just treated like a piece of evidence. Because if they were thinking of you as a person, they would think, “Could it be difficult being in the same hotel as these people? Could it be difficult walking through the entrance hall?” “Could it be difficult having students watching it?” And no one seems to be considering those personal type questions. It’s just all about the fact and the charges and the pieces of evidence. And that’s all the wrong way around for healthcare. Because healthcare’s all about how you’re made to feel.

And then that was it. But we wanted to stay for the whole two weeks. Partly because it was all about dishonesty and my midwife was trying to say that I was lying, whereas I knew that she was lying.

And the Trust wouldn’t’ tell me anything about their internal investigation, so I was desperate to know what she was actually saying. Like I didn’t know if she’d changed her mind and if she was gonna say, “Yeah, I did lie and I’m really sorry”, or if she was gonna be stood there saying that I was a liar.

Or if she was gonna come up with excuses. And I felt the only way of me knowing more about what had happened was to stay and listen to the hearing. And it was about [NAME], so I wanted to stay.

So, yeah, we then had another two weeks in [CITY] that we had to sort out for ourselves. But I’ve got a cousin who lives on the edge of [CITY], so we stayed in his spare room. So we used the NMC train ticket to get there to [CITY] and we went back for the weekend home, and then we paid for our travel to [CITY] the next week. And my parents basically moved in and looked after my three children for those two weeks. Again, we were just really lucky that they’re both retired and that they could do that.

But it was a nightmare logistically and the girls weren’t happy that we were vanishing. Because they were still quite little.

I just thought I would give my evidence and they would respect that and then that would be my bit done.

INTERVIEWER: How long were you giving evidence for?

Sarah: So it was nearly two hours, mine was. We did have a break in the middle. But it wasn’t a very good break because I basically just ran out of the room. I couldn’t take it anymore, and I couldn’t get out of the bloody room, because they’re these stupid swipe doors that you had to swipe, so it got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore and I just wanted to run out of the room and looking back, obviously the panel, the Chair should maybe have spotted that and suggested taking a break.

So then someone else had to come up behind me and try to swipe me out, and then I couldn’t remember where I was going and I was running up this corridor trying to find this room where we had to sit and wait and [NAME] wasn’t with me, because he had to be totally separate from me the whole time I was giving my evidence. So I hadn’t expected it to be that long. I think it felt really confusing, because they have the massive bundle of evidence papers, and I hadn’t been—I’d asked to see it before and hadn’t been allowed to see it. And they kept telling you to turn to whatever page. And if the barrister disagreed with something I was saying, he’d be like, “Well on page this, this and this, this is what you said.” And it just seemed ridiculous, like all the questions I was being asked. Like, they were making a big thing of whether the midwife had put me on hold. Or just asked me to hold the phone. And he was arguing about the wording I was using for that, and saying that in page whatever of my statement it said she’d put me on hold, but actually she didn’t put me on hold. And just, it was like he was picking on every little thing to try and confused. And I think just the fact that he blatantly didn’t believe me. I hadn’t expected that. Or, well maybe he did, but it’s his job to not believe me, or to make everyone else not believe me. So, it’s—I think it’s hard not having a representative, because you can’t talk back and argue back for yourself, so it felt like the barrister could say whatever he wanted, and try and like tear me apart and make out like I was a bad mum and that I didn’t care about my children and that I was too busy to go and do what the midwife said. And that I wasn’t listening, but I wasn’t allowed to say no or to give any evidence about myself that proves that I do always take healthcare professionals’ advice, because the trial wasn’t about me. It was about the midwife’s Fitness to Practise. So it’s really weird, because he brought up all this evidence about what a good character my midwife had, so she couldn’t possibly be lying. But I wasn’t allowed to present any evidence to show that I have a good character.

It was really weird. I think it was just really empty because we’d been focused on the hearing and the investigations for like, more than two years. I don’t think I’d properly had time to grieve [NAME] because I’d just been thrown straight into investigations and hearings. And then it was done and she had got a caution. But they hadn’t agreed that she was being dishonest, so I was angry at that. And I was just really angry about the whole process, and I kept having nightmares about the barrister cross examining me. And I’d have nightmares about him screaming at me that my baby was dead and it my fault. I was still getting phantom kicks and it felt like [NAME] was kicking me. And that carried on for quite a long while. It was hard to focus on the girls.

And I knew I should, and I know I’m lucky I’ve got three girls who are alive. But you still miss the ones that aren’t there, don’t you? And it was the summer holidays, so the hearing was in the last two weeks of school before the summer holidays. So it just felt almost like there was no let-up, because I was then into toddler and little girl craziness for five weeks with no break of getting them to school.

But I felt really let down by the NMC, because their whole purpose is supposed to be to protect the public, isn’t it? And make sure their people are fit to be on the register. But actually, by doing their process to see if that midwife is fit to be on the register, they’d caused us a lot of harm.

I felt really let down by the NMC, because their whole purpose is supposed to be to protect the public, isn’t it? And make sure their people are fit to be on the register. But actually, by doing their process to see if that midwife is fit to be on the register, they’d caused us a lot of harm. In a lot of ways I wish I’d never put myself and my family through it. And I don’t think I’d have gone into it so quickly if I’d realised how many years and how much hurt it would cause.

N: And I had the op on my shoulder and then after the op, obviously you’re very medicated. The painkillers after being put under and woken up again. And I was left in a room with a male nurse. By myself, very heavily sedated. But I remember him, when I kind of woke up, and he had his hand between my legs. So that was the incident that I reported. I was unsure for quite some time but I knew that I couldn’t be unsure because of how strongly I felt about it and the memories that kept coming back. I was distressed at night. I was physically sick. I could have maybe put it down to the medication but I couldn’t. There was just something that I knew it had happened, and it was making me – it was consuming me. And then I wasn’t sure how often it had happened, because I only remembered one incident, and I was knocked out. So, if I was asleep or medicated, he could have done it multiple times and I didn’t know. And it was a lot. So, I picked up the phone and I phoned the hospital and I spoke to the head nurse and basically that’s how I raised the complaint.

So, after I reported it, going back a few years now, so memory could be a bit hazy, I felt obviously distraught with the case, and knowing that I had to go through a hearing at the council in [AREA] describing what happened. It was a tough time, I think I was still emotionally fragile from what happened and dealing with everything, and then again, like I said, having to speak about it in a public space. Obviously, my worst nightmare anyway, that I had to talk about something so personal and traumatic. It was a lot.

And I think I just had the worst-case scenario in my head, just building it up. When I got to [TOWN], I was a bundle of nerves, but when I was there I was really put at ease with the caseworker and being led into the room beforehand, before anybody was there, so I wasn’t shocked or overwhelmed by anything. So, I could understand where I’d be sitting who would be speaking to me, who else would be in the room, if there was going to be a recording, and that really helped. So that kind of broke down that barrier. And then just understanding what was going to follow. It was really helpful, so when I was actually in the room with everybody in there, there were no shocks, an everybody was very understanding about the case, and how they questioned me, the tone, descriptions, I just thought that from end to end everything was well thought-out and they cared and took care of me.

My manager went with me, because my mum wasn’t – at the time, she was living in [COUNTRY]. I didn’t really talk about it to my family and friends, really, just a select few, and again I just kind of boxed it in. I just wanted to keep it separate from that. So like I said, I spoke to my manager about it and with her background, she came with me to the hearing. And yeah, was there. A familiar face, I guess, in the room, which is helpful.

I think we sat down after the hearing, so I guess we had a liaison person who welcomed me and took me into the room before the hearing and just kind of looked after me for the day, and then afterwards we just sat down and discussed next steps, what to expect. You know, she was really praiseworthy and she said, “You were really thorough in what you were talking about,” and I guess it was with the help of my manager to do that. And me and my manager went for a coffee in [TOWN], and spoke about what just happened, and what to expect for the outcomes, and they said he might come back to appeal, he could not get struck off, he could get – all the outcomes. And just preparing ourselves for if we need to do something like this again, if he did appeal.

So, I felt in a better place, I guess, because I spoke about it. I guess it’s almost therapy, talking about it in a public place, and talking about it to more people as well, so I felt like I’d moved on a little bit with it, but I was still carrying a lot of trauma inside from being violated, because, you know, it’s totally out of your control.

INTERVIEWER: What sort of advice would you give to somebody who is thinking about making a referral about a health professional or any other professional, like a social worker?

N: I just feel that if you have that feeling that something inappropriate happened, I wouldn’t ignore it, to the extent that it kind of affects your ability to function because sometimes if you let it get that far, there’s no coming back. So, if you do think something inappropriate happened, speak to the hospital. There’s always a number on a website about a complaint and how to raise it.

Maybe my experience was a bit different because it was a private hospital, but I’m sure if it was NHS it wouldn’t be any different. Just pick up the phone and speak to somebody and you’ll get help, the right kind of help and that would start the process, even to speak to somebody as well. And don’t keep it to yourself, again that’s really not the way to proceed. Speak to a member of family, a friend, and the hospital or a professional that you want to make the complaint to. I think that’s the right thing to do.

You know, they’re the caring profession, so I feel like that should be at the forefront, making sure that the person is supported and the NMC is there to help them through the whole process, whether it is just to speak to them about their complaint or taking it even further, I feel like there should be a face the person can speak to, pick up the phone to and just be spoken to end to end for the whole process, because it can be very overwhelming if you don’t have that background, somebody who knows about how these things work. You could just withdraw your complaint, because it can be a really intimidating space to be in and talking about things again. It can be quite traumatic.