Profile: Dr Jane Barton, GP and the Gosport hospital scandal

Dr Jane Barton is the retired GP at the heart of the Gosport scandal, who signed off the medical prescriptions that potentially contributed to the early deaths of hundreds of patients.

An independent inquiry, which started in 2014, has reviewed 833 death certificates signed by Barton, and found that 456 patients died and possibly 200 more had their lives shortened because of the routine practice at Gosport War Memorial hospital. The report said there was a “disregard for human life” and a “culture of shortening the lives” of a significant number of patients between 1989 and 2000.

There is no suggestion Barton intentionally took lives. She retired as a registered doctor in 2010 and no longer practices medicine.

The review, led by the former bishop of Liverpool James Jones, suggested that the 69-year-old prescribed the powerful painkiller diamorphine – the medical name for heroin – in a “brusque and indifferent” manner.

Barton graduated from the University of Oxford in 1972 with a bachelor of medicine, before beginning work at the Gosport War Memorial hospital in Hampshire, where she practiced from 1988 to 2000.

Her husband, Tim Barton, told The Sunday Times in 2002 that she had been under a huge amount of pressure and was severely overworked. “Instead of trying to find a new Harold Shipman, it might be more constructive to ask why a part-time GP was looking after 48 beds,” he said.

“No one has seen any of the letters she sent saying, ‘You cannot keep sending me this number of patients, I cannot cope with this number’.”

She left the hospital in 2000 and became a family GP in Gosport.

A 2009 inquest into 10 deaths at the hospital found the administration of medication “contributed more than minimally” to five of the deaths, with three of those not receiving “appropriate” medication for their symptoms. It found the skills of nursing and non-consultant medical staff “particularly Dr Barton, were not adequate”.

In 2010 the General Medical Council (GMC) panel found that Barton prescribed “potentially hazardous” levels of drugs to elderly patients, while working at Gosport War Memorial hospital.

It found Barton guilty of serious professional misconduct, stating she made a series of failings in her treatment of the patients, who later died, including issuing drugs which were “excessive, inappropriate and potentially hazardous”.

But the GMC ruled the doctor would be allowed to continue working if she abided by certain conditions. Outrage at the decision led families to call for a public inquiry, and the decision was criticised by the then chief of the GMC for being too lenient.

Barton said in a statement after that ruling: “I am disappointed by the decision of the GMC panel.

“Anyone following this case carefully will know that I was faced with an excessive and increasing burden in trying to care for patients at the Gosport War Memorial hospital.

“None of the nurses who gave evidence were critical of my care of the patients in this inquiry.

“The consultants who had overall responsibility for the patients never expressed concern about my treatment and working practices.

“Throughout my career I have tried to do my very best for all my patients and have had only their interests and wellbeing at heart.”