Our thanks to Stuart for this. Extracts:
A five-year-old girl died of an asthma attack after being turned away by a GP because she arrived minutes late for her appointment.
Ellie-May Clark and her mother, from Newport, were told to return the next morning by Dr Joanne Rowe, a specialist in safeguarding children.
The little girl died five hours later, on 26 January 2015…
Ms Clark, a single mother, was too upset to talk about losing her little girl, but Ellie-May’s grandmother said: “We all feel terribly let down, I think Dr Rowe should go to jail for what she did. I can’t believe she was not struck off.
“We haven’t even had an apology from Dr Rowe who has got away with just a slap on the wrist.
“She has been allowed to get on with her life, get another job and move on.”
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Justice for Men & Boys 
I am very concerned about this post in many ways. Children? people with asthma can deteriorate very quickly it seems it was almost 5 hours later,Mum become worried enough to phone an ambulance. The GP concerned has been suspended and investigated, yes she is portrayed as rude and aggressive but she has gone on to be re-employed and her current practice revealed in the press. I think the GP should have seen the patient its never a young child’s fault for being late for an appointment. My thoughts are with the family at this sad time. A witch hunt on this doctor will do no one any favours.
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It’s not a witch hunt. This doctor contravened medical ethics. She had a duty of care. She should be banned from practicing medicine for life. If society lets things like this slide then standards continue to deteriorate. Doctors are getting away with murder, or in this case manslaughter. The doctors who illegally mutilate boys’ genitals should also be put in jail and on the sex offenders register, too.
I doubt a white male doctor would have got away with this.
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“people with asthma can deteriorate very quickly ”
true, my wife ended up in hospital after what at first seemed like a mild asthma attack.
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This is madness. I have no medical training and I know an asthma attack is potentially fatal.
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Quite right too. People, whether children or not, cannot expect a woman to upset her work / life balance for something as trivial as a life threatening condition.
More seriously, perhaps it’s time to reinstate the Hippocratic Oath.
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This is how the BBC described the doctor
“Dr Joanne Rowe, a specialist in safeguarding children.”
and it appears she had a habit of refusing to see patients who were late.
I can understand that a GP wants to discourage tardiness, but the doctor could have seen the girl after the patient the GP claims she was seeing at the time( its disputed though) especially as there was a history ( the group practice had been warned) and the receptionist also had been warned that the girl would be late.
I can only conclude( my personal opinion alone) that the doctor was grumpy about this( given that we are all human its understandable), but most of us don’t act on our personal feelings about this( we act professionally) and the unfortunately consequences came through..
bit of hypocritical blot on the Hippocratic oath ??
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