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St Margaret's Hospital Regrets the Service Failure in Breast Cancer Screening Unit

by Medindia Content Team on Jun 29 2006 12:45 PM

St Margaret's Hospital, Epping, Essex health authority apologized for the severe service failure during the diagnosis of breast cancer.

The health official said that they would publish an incident report as to what has happened and other measures they have done to prevent such incidents from recurring again. He was very sorry that 18 women with breast cancer were initially told they were not suffering from the disease. About 5,765 screening cases were re-examined.

The health authority issued a statement of apology saying that various factors led to the problem. The hospital suffered from substandard clinical and management practices with inadequate supervision in the breast cancer screening unit. There were also misunderstandings between the members of staff at the unit. The staffs were not provided adequate training and there was an acute shortage of staff.

Dr Paul Watson, medical director of the Essex Strategic Health Authority, said that it would be very painful and stressful for all those women who had been recalled and diagnosed with breast cancer. He said that the hospital has done everything to make sure that such a situation could never arise again.


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