Trainee paediatrician receives warning after full remediation following death of baby

A trainee paediatrician whose mismanagement of a struggling newborn led to his preventable death has been found guilty of misconduct, but will face no sanction beyond a formal warning after her senior colleagues told a medical practitioners tribunal that she is now an exemplary doctor.

Suryasatya Dhulipala admitted all the General Medical Council’s charges against her, acknowledging that she failed to intubate Finnley James Adam Morris, when it should have been obvious to a doctor with her training that her initial approach of bagging him with a Neopuff face mask had not achieved sufficient pressure to open his airway. He suffered a hypoxic brain injury and died four days later.

Dhulipala told the hearing that she had failed to take a “helicopter view” of the case, and agreed with the report of the GMC’s expert witness who said that she had become fixated on the baby’s rising and falling chest, which she …