A family GP who failed to diagnose diabetes in a critically ill teenager hours before she died broke down in tears as she told a tribunal the mistake would live with her for the rest of her life.
Dr Michelle Watts, 47, had been summoned to a home visit to treat schoolgirl Claire Taylor, 17, but allegedly “laughed off” concerns from the girl’s mother that she needed hospital treatment.
She also failed to properly examine Claire when she attended her Kirriemuir Health Centre practice in Angus, the previous day and then again at the teen’s home after she began feeling violently unwell.
Claire was said to have lost weight, had a blue pallor, sunken cheeks and was struggling to eat or drink but Dr Watts left the house suggesting she take a course of sleeping tablets.
The keen dancer died from diabetic ketoacidosis a few hours later with her mother in a chair beside her on November 7 2012.
It was subsequently discovered she had been suffering from Type 1 diabetes, and Claire’s mother Helen, 55, had earlier informed Dr Watts that her family had a history of the condition.
Giving evidence at a medical tribunal in Manchester on Friday, Dr Watts acknowledged her mistake had “catastrophic consequences”.
“I am deeply, deeply sorry,” she said. “I wish I could go back and change things but I can’t. This will be with me for the rest of my life.
“I feel that if I could miss a diagnosis like this then somebody else could. I can’t go back and change anything, however much I want to. I can’t go back and change what has been done.
“I can do everything I can to make sure it doesn’t happen to another family or another clinician.”
Dr Watts said she had considered diabetes but the condition was ‘at the back of her mind’, and it is alleged she instead associated Claire’s poor health with “panic breathing”.
Claire, who was also a talented baker with dreams of becoming a dietician, had been taken to see four doctors before her first consultation with Dr Watts, when she lost 10lb in 10 days.
At the end of their November 6 2012 meeting, Dr Watts attempted to test Claire for diabetes using the finger prick method, but she refused.
She arranged for Claire to have a blood test later in the week but she died before it could be performed.
Dr Watts added: “Looking back now, with the benefit of hindsight and hindsight is a wonderful thing I had some pieces of the jigsaw and was connecting them in the wrong way to make the wrong picture.”
Describing her distress on learning of Claire’s death, she said: “As more information came in over those days and I began to reflect and understand what had happened, and when the post-mortem results came through and it all fitted together I was absolutely devastated.
“I couldn’t understand why a clinician who had been working for more than 20 years, who had never had anything like this happen to her, who was a diabetes specialist in the practice, who looked after thousands of patients over the years managing different rare illnesses… How on Earth I could have missed this? That is what I thought.”
Dr Watts, who is also associate medical director of primary care services at NHS Tayside, denies writing misleading notes following school prefect Claire’s death to “minimise the scope” for any criticism.
She said she recorded that Claire wasn’t complaining of abdominal pain when she visited her at home because she hadn’t specifically mentioned it to her.
Strenuously denying her note-making was dishonest, she added: “I am extremely open and honest and we all make mistakes. I make mistakes probably as much as everybody else.
“In my clinical career I have been incredibly fortunate to have never had anything like this happen to me. I can count the number of complaints in my 25 years practice on the fingers of one hand, in fact, I struggle to think of a time I have had a previous complaint.”
The hearing continues.