Botched operation cover-up allegations at Milton Keynes Hospital

The cover-up of botched operations and a series of other damning allegations have been made against Milton Keynes Hospital in Buckinghamshire.

According to Maggie Southcote-Want, a former director of nursing at the NHS hospital, a number of serious incidents were swept under the carpet in an effort to avoid bad publicity.

She claims that on one occasion a consultant was suspended after accidentally damaging a patient's organs during surgery.

In another case, a locum is alleged to have incorrectly analysed samples of tissue from women referred to the hospital with breast lumps.

However, the hospital decided not to make a public announcement but instead attempted to track the patients involved, although three were never found, she claims.

Ms Southcote-Want made the allegations as part of an employment tribunal. She is taking action against her former employer which she says unfairly gave her the sack in 2007 for giving a job to a friend.

She also asserts that the hospital hired a PR firm to deal with media enquiries after an internal investigation revealed that bodies were kept on the floor of the hospital morgue.

"What I was meant to have done was so trivial compared to the things that were happening in the rest of the hospital at that time. It does not make sense," she said.

Milton Keynes Hospital was opened in 1984, gaining NHS Foundation Trust status in 2007.

A large scale study has shown that you are more likely to die if you are taken into hospital at the weekend. Researchers from University College London, commissioned by the Department of Health, looked at...

A new survey has found that Brits are twice as likely to gamble with their health than with their money or their career. AXA Wealth carried out a survey of 2008 adults, and found that nearly a fifth (18%) of...

A new report has revealed that the NHS spends £60,000 a day on translation and interpretation, totalling over £23m last year. Think tank 2020Health collected data from 247 NHS trusts using Freedom of...

Scientists cannot explain how 75 per cent of people catch the superbug C. difficile, after a study showed that only a quarter of infections in one hospital system were traced to contact with a suffering...

The NHS faces a £15.7bn bill as the number of clinical negligence claims made against it rise by 9 per cent in the last year. The £15.7bn cost is equivalent to one seventh of the health service’s annual...