Colchester: Paramedic faces misconduct probe (From Essex County Standard)

Colchester: Paramedic faces misconduct probe

1:20pm Friday 13th November 2009

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A paramedic will face a misconduct hearing over claims he failed to resuscitate a dying child.

Alan MacFarlane is due to appear before a Health Professions Council panel on Monday following the death of eight-year-old Harry Sherman in April last year.

It is alleged the paramedic, who attended the call in Berechurch Road, Colchester, with a technician, did not attempt to resuscitate the brain-damaged boy who had suffered breathing problems on the night in question.

Instead Mr MacFarlane – who no longer works for the East of England Ambulance Service - drove him to Colchester General Hospital, where he died.

After Harry's death, his father Marlon said: “These are guys who are meant to have been trained and they came into my home and saw a child dying and didn’t do anything about it.

“I was forced to do CPR both here and standing in the ambulance while the paramedic drove and the technician watched.”

A spokesman from the ambulance service offered their “sincere apologies” to Harry's family at the time of the incident.

He added: “The crew’s behaviour and their treatment of the patient was completely unacceptable and well below the high standards of clinical care on which we pride ourselves.”

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