A five-year-old boy died after hospital staff administered him with 10 times the correct dose of insulin after misdiagnosing him with diabetes, his family has said.
Staff at Rotherham General Hospital in South Yorkshire reportedly misdiagnosed Shay Turner’s symptoms and administered the insulin dose by mistake.
Shay was admitted to hospital last year but died days later when he suffered a brain injury. Shay’s parents, Laura and Marty, have said that after his death they were informed that Shay did not have diabetes and was “likely to have been suffering from sepsis”.
Speaking to Mail Online, Laura said: “There are two major failings that we need answers to – the overdose of insulin and what effect that had on him and the missed sepsis. So far nobody has told us the truth and we want to know what happened to our son.”
The coroner’s report concluded that Shay did not have diabetes. South Yorkshire Police carried out a 10-month investigatio, but no further action was taken. An inquest is to be carried out later this year.
A spokesperson for Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Rotherham General Hospital, said: “Our thoughts and sympathies are very much with Shay’s family and our medical director has recently written to them about the serious incident investigation which we are currently undertaking.”
According to the NHS, symptoms of sepsis in babies and children include high temperature, breathing difficulties, decreased urination and weakness.
The symptoms of undiagnosed type 1 diabetes are known as the 4 Ts: thirst (drinking more liquids), toilet (increased urination), tired (more fatigued than normal) and thinner (unexplained weight loss). Undiagnosed type 1 diabetes can be extremely dangerous and medical help should be sought to prevent diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) developing, a life-threatening complication of undiagnosed type 1.
