News

Gosport scandal: Dr Jane Barton claims she was ‘doing her best’ for patients

Report finds hundreds of people's lives were shortened by administration of opioids
Jane Barton & husband

Report finds hundreds of people's lives were shortened by administration of opioids

Jane Barton & husband
Jane Barton and her husband. Picture: Solent News Agency

A retired doctor involved in the scandal at Gosport Memorial Hospital says she was ‘doing her best’ for patients.

Jane Barton said she is a ‘hard-working doctor’ working in an ‘inadequately resourced’ part of the NHS.

A damning report published last week concluded hundreds of people's lives were shortened after being prescribed opioids.

Dr Barton appeared outside her Gosport home, where her husband Tim read a statement that said: ‘Jane would like to thank her family, friends, colleagues, former patients and many others for their continued support and loyalty through this protracted inquiry.

‘She has always maintained she was a hard-working doctor doing her best for her patients in a very inadequately resourced part of the health service.

‘We ask that our privacy is respected at this difficult time, she will be making no comment.’

More than 450 people's lives were shortened after being prescribed opioids at the Hampshire hospital, while another 200 were ‘probably’ similarly given opioids without medical justification between 1989 and 2000, according to the Gosport Independent Panel report.

The report claims ‘there was a disregard for human life and a culture of shortening lives of a large number of patients’ at the hospital.

It states there was an ‘institutionalised regime of prescribing and administering “dangerous doses” of a hazardous combination of medication not clinically indicated or justified’.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the police would examine new material from the report.

On Thursday last week, Hampshire Constabulary said any new inquiry would be investigated by a different force following criticism of its previous inquiries.

In 2010, the General Medical Council ruled that Dr Barton was guilty of multiple instances of professional misconduct relating to 12 patients who died at the hospital.


In other news

Jobs