Personal Injury Claims Bristol Blog

After an 84-year-old man died after falling and breaking his hip at the Ramsey Unit in the grounds of Furness General Hospital last year, a coroner has ruled that the fatal fall was unpreventable.   David Mole from Haverigg in southwest Cumbria died in July of last year after falling at an under-fire dementia care unit in Barrow.  The Care Quality Commission (CQC) issued the unit with two warning notices regarding “chronic staff shortages” only last month.

After Medway NHS Trust was placed under special measures following the Keogh report earlier in the year, the lack of improvement has resulted in the trust being threatened with urgent action or a leadership change if services don’t get better. The hospital trust was put under special measures after major failings were identified across multiple departments.

An NHS report has revealed that last month an 87-year-old man died after an East Midlands Ambulance Service crew lost the keys to their vehicle.  The elderly man had suffered a cardiac arrest on a local golf course, Derbyshire golf pavilion, and died there despite having been provided with treatment.  The report does not explicitly state that the lack of hospital transport was the reason for his death, but it has been listed as one of the eight EMAS incidents that were highlighted as being particularly serious in October.

A coroner has described 63-year-old Mike Martin’s case as “unacceptable” after he had to wait 13 hours in hospital before being taken into surgery, and sadly died during the wait.  Mr Martin was taken into Northampton General Hospital in February 2012 after complaining of such severe pain that he could not lie down – he was then left for 13 hours before surgery was available to him.

A health visitor working for Cambridgeshire Community Services has been struck off after failing to recognise that a baby in her care had a broken arm.  Despite the mother of the baby raising concern over worrying bruising that had appeared on her baby’s arm, Deborah Kendall failed to carry out any examination and failed to recognise the breakage.

With fears on the rise about the standard of basic nursing care in our NHS, a recent BBC clip followed two retired nurses, Trudy O’Connor and Deborah Harrison, to investigate whether or not standards really have slipped.  Having themselves trained in 1968, they believe that the current level of care is not as high as it was when they were nurses.  One of them complained that when her son was in hospital, he was not washed in nine days, and when there, she also witnessed an elderly patient struggling to eat without any assistance from a nurse.