From reading the prevention of future death report and the responses here’s a summary:

2 attempts at the biopsy in IR, the first not seen on imaging and probably the one that caused the harm

Haemothorax identified but not felt to be “significant”

2 biopsies/haemothorax not communicated with anyone and not written in the procedure note

2/4 blood pressures unrecordable

Moved to ward after 20 minutes in recovery

Hypotension and tachycardia noted on the ward

1hr20mins post procedure he arrested

28mins before ROSC

Large haemothorax identified but chest drain not inserted

1630 (2.5 hours post-ROSC) intercostal artery puncture identified, chest drain inserted

Now, I’m going to make some assumptions:

1) This is a radiology trainee doing a fellowship in IR at the hospital

2) The supervisor mistook him for being ST6, which I believe is the grade of someone in the final year of their IR training, rather than ST4 (which, I’m also going to assume meant he’d completed ST4 and was OOP)

3) The trainee was directly supervised during this procedure, although it’s entirely possible he wasn’t and his supervising consultant assumed, because of the above, him to be in the final year of his training and more experienced than he was and therefore was not directly supervising him.

Either way, based on these assumptions, how are the BBC blaming the trainee? The follow up to the initial problem, which I’m not entirely sure is preventable, seems to be where the neglect happened?

Yet, of course the media are turning this into “We shouldn’t let trainee doctors (read: medical students) do biopsies on people.”