The parents of a little girl who died 24 hours after being sent home from hospital said they “didn’t feel listened to” by healthcare workers. Hailey Thompson was just 22-months-old when she tragically died of sepsis and pneumonia in her sleep after being sent home from A&E without antiobiotics. But an inquest found that she died of natural causes, with “missed opportunities” for her case to be reviewed not ultimately contributing to her untimely death.
Hailey, who lived in Ashton-in-Makerfield, Wigan, was first taken to her local A&E in early December, 2022, with a cold and cough, for which she was given antibiotics for a suspected throat infection, the Manchester Evening News reports. After her mother Ibolya Adam noticed a red rash on her face, the family decided she should stop taking the medication, however, due to her sister’s allergy to penicillin.
After her condition persisted, the 22-month-old was booked in for another GP appointment on December 16, with a high temperature and runny nose leading to the diagnosis of a viral infection. Hailey’s parents were told to take her home and give her Calpol and Ibuprofen and the toddler seemed to improve over the next 48 hours, eating more and going to bed early.
But disaster struck late on December 17 when her dad Kris Thompson found his daughter “panting for breath” at around 11.30pm. She was rushed to A&E at the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary, where the family waited for four hours to be seen by a doctor.
When they were finally admitted, the attending doctor was “agitated”, Hailey’s parents said, and allegedly gave up after several failed attempts to shine a torch down her throat and examine her tongue.
They were sent home at 6am and told to keep an eye on Hailey’s condition after being handed a second viral infection diagnosis. The 22-month-old went to sleep with “no worrying signs”, the jury at Bolton Crown Court heard, and at midnight her breathing was reportedly “not as laboured” as it had been.
When her parents woke up on December 19, however, the toddler was lying cold in her cot. Kris ran to call 999 and tell the operator that his daughter was dying, while Ibolya said “everything was a blur”.
Hailey’s father initially administered CPR before paramedics took over and rushed her to the Royal Albert Edward, where she died at around 7:35am. The jury concluded that she had died of sepsis caused by Step A infection in her lungs which caused pneumonia, with “missed opportunities” at a primary care level “not contributing to her death”.
Her parents said they were concerned about “the quality of care Hailey received in the days leading up to her death” and suggested that they hadn’t felt “listened to” by doctors who insisted that what their daughter was suffering from was “just a virus, like a cold”.
However, after hearing from an expert who said the decision to send Hailey home on December 17 had been “reasonable”, the coroner told the jury to “disregard” any suspicion around the “suspension” of antibiotics for the toddler.
He said it would “not be safe to speculate” whether further antibiotics treatment could have saved her life after two doctors told the inquest that further prescriptions would not have been likely to be effective because she was suffering from a viral infection.
“Hailey would now be four-years-old,” her parents said in a statement on Thursday, April 3. “We accept the finding of the jury and we note that the GP and the hospital trust will be learning lessons from this and we hope these lessons go on to save the [lives] of other children.”
