NHS trust apologises for German doctor's botched operation

An NHS trust has apologised to the family of a woman who died shortly after a German locum surgeon botched an operation on her hip. Ena Dickinson, 94, died two months after mistakes by Dr Werner Kolb left her unable to walk. During the operation in August 2008 at Grantham hospital in Lincolnshire, he removed bone that should have been left and severed an artery. The only reason Dickinson did not die immediately was because a consultant stepped in, an inquest heard yesterday. The coroner, Stuart Fisher, recorded a narrative verdict. Afterwards, United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust said it had changed the way it recruited staff and apologised to the family of Dickinson. "The trust has done everything possible to learn from this incident and to prevent it happening to another patient," a spokeswoman said. "Changes have been made to the recruitment of medical staff, including the appointment of locums, and a new surgical safety checklist produced by the World Health Organisation has now been implemented throughout the trust." Last year the General Medical Council (GMC) suspended Kolb from practising in the UK. Six months before the operation, a Cambridgeshire man, David Gray, 70, died after another German locum doctor injected him with 10 times the recommended dose of the painkiller diamorphine. Dr Daniel Ubani was working his first shift in the UK as an out-of-hours doctor. The case has prompted the GMC and Royal College of GPs to demand a change to EU rules that allow doctors from Europe to be registered in the UK without tests on their English or medical competence. Doctors from the rest of the world already face such checks.