The tragedy is that continuous ultrasound guidance has been available for 10 years and when used properly, the chances of hitting the baby during amniocentesis are very much reduced. Not only does it risk causing miscarriage, but the baby may survive with brain damage. Oxford pathologist Wainey Squire has studied the brains of a number of (now deceased) children with severe brain injury at birth who’d had amniocentesis and can date the time of the injury to the time of the procedure In addition, the babies had puncture marks in their skulls. The obstetrician didn’t even speak to her, stuck the needle in three times without ultrasound guidance, drew blood on each occasion, gave up and walked out. I love the work but if anything drives me away from it, it’ll be the lawyers.”I spent a day or so feeling sorry for obstetricians until Sacha Baveystock, the series producer on Trust Me, told me of a phone call she’d received from a woman who’d had a “blind” amniocentesis done in Manchester.

Whatever operation or procedure you care to name, some places do it well and some places do it badly. It’s always been that way and it’ll remain so without a substantial input of resources into medical training and manpower. The only thing that’s changed is that programmes like yours are making the public think that instead of being thankful for whatever the NHS gives them, they have a right to expect that whoever they see is up to date and competent It’s a nice sentiment but a million miles away from reality. So all you’re doing is increasing public expectation beyond what the service can deliver and making it even tougher for doctors.”
I was about to launch into a vigorous defence when I spotted another old colleague. Well not that old actually – she’d been an obstetric registrar when I was a senior house officer – but she’s finally become a consultant and she looked bloody ancient.

She was and still is a brilliant obstetrician, so why was she finding it so tough? “Litigation. I’ve got an in-tray this big with complaints going back 10 years. The sad thing is that I know that in nearly every case nothing negligent happened. On one occasion, a junior doctor made a mistake but even then she was doing her best given the conditions and I don’t think it affected the outcome. But people expect you to get it right first time, every time and they think medical science has miraculous solutions to everything. Without ultrasound you can never be sure where the needle will end up and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what might happen if it hits the placenta or baby. “I’m not saying it doesn’t happen,” said Dr X (who wishes to remain that way) “but I’m just not sure whether any good will come of exposing it.

You know as well as I do that the NHS is run on a shoestring budget and a consequence of that is the very patchy quality of the service. The critic in question is a GP who was commenting on a Trust Me, I’m a Doctor feature exposing the fact that amniocentesis – the withdrawal through a needle of fluid surrounding an embryo for screening tests – is still being done in some centres in the UK without continuous ultrasound guidance. But when it comes from someone you respect it does tend to hit home. “THE TROUBLE with you is that you’re not one of us any more – you’re one of them.” As criticism goes, I’ve had worse.