Personal Injury Claims Bristol Blog

A recent Care Quality Commission (CQC) report highlighted some worrying findings after a recent inspection of a Warrington care home found that residents were “at risk of dehydration and malnutrition”. The report noted a number of serious concerns at the care home, including the fact that staff at Birch Court lacked general patient contact skills and were also unable to answer basic healthcare-related questions. It was even found that some patients were being locked in their rooms, and because of failings with regards to the proper use of safeguards, their “human rights were not protected”.

Researchers at the London School of Economics have stated that more than 100,000 people a year who require end of life care are just not getting it.  Their recently published report describes the current system as sadly lacking and in need of a “major overhaul”.  Terminally ill patients are being left suffering with insufficient pain relief and support.

The former partner of a woman who fell into a coma after giving birth to a son, who later died, is suing the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust for £1million. 46-year-old Christian Cooper remains in a ‘minimally responsive state’ and lives in a nursing home after suffering the heart attack at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in July 2005. 

A woman who was forced to wait for a year to have an operation for her severely painful womb condition has been sent an apology from the NHS. Dawn O’Toole was diagnosed with endometriosis in 2014 - a painful condition whereby tissue that behaves like that in the lining of the womb, is found outside the womb.  She urgently required a hysterectomy following the diagnosis, but never received an operation date.

A woman has finally had her brain tumour removed after her operation was cancelled and rescheduled three times. 24-year-old Emily Bennet, from Fernhill Heath near Worcester, was originally meant to have her tumour removed at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham at the beginning of December.  However, it was cancelled because a more severe case required her operation slot at the hospital.

The family of a man who died of an undiagnosed ruptured spleen has described the fact that nobody has been held accountable for their son’s death as “shameful”. John Moore-Robinson, aged 20, died after being sent home from Stafford Hospital with a ruptured spleen that doctors had failed to recognise. His parents, Frank and Janet Robinson, feel that someone should be held accountable.

A psychiatric hospital in York is to be closed after inspectors described it as “unsuitable and unsafe for patients”.  The Archbishop of York originally built the hospital in 1777 as the ‘County Lunatic Asylum’, which was later changed to the Bootham Park Hospital.  The hospital houses two acute admission wards, one for men and one for women, and also has an elderly assessment unit for people aged over 65. A recent inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), however, found the hospital to be no longer safe for patients.

A review has been opened into the care received by a teenager at Redhill’s East Surrey Hospital after she died in August. 19-year-old Georgina Weaver was admitted to the hospital with complaints of severe headaches and blurred vision. Georgina’s parents are still waiting to hear the actual cause of their daughter’s death following delays in the post-mortem examination.

An East Sussex hospital has apologised to the family of a breast cancer patient who died following an operation in 2012. 35-year-old Nicole Haynes was undergoing a routine procedure at the Eastbourne District General Hospital to remove a tumour from her adrenal gland when the surgeon accidentally “clipped the wrong vessels”. It was heard that surgeon Steve Garnett had “misidentified” the arteries which caused the death of Mrs Haynes.

With screenings playing an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of numerous illnesses, such as cancer, the NHS has recently been criticised for not using the equipment adequately.  The Science and Technology Committee has accused the NHS of “poor communication” on the issue of screenings, with people all over the UK being subject to both misdiagnosis and “overdiagnosis”.

After a family recently received compensation for the brain damage of their son following a hospital error, figures have revealed that the health trust has paid out over £37.8 million to patients in the last ten years. Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust agreed to compensate the family of Cody Lyster-Hughes £6.5m earlier this week – one of the biggest payouts the health trust has ever made.

With over 150 people in England affected by Salmonella over the last few months, Public Health England is investigating the possible sources. Tests have already revealed that all the cases are linked to one particular source, but this has not yet been identified. The illness is usually linked to foods such as eggs and poultry, causing diarrhoea, stomach pains, sickness and fever.  Most people are able to recover without treatment; however, one hospital has reported three deaths in relation to the outbreak.

According to new research, patients have to wait in ambulance queues outside of A&E for hours before being seen by a doctor.  Last year more than 300,000 ambulances were forced to queue outside of hospitals in England with patients inside.  With a national waiting time target of 15 minutes, one patient waited for more than eight hours in an ambulance before being seen by a doctor.

A confidential report into the out-of-hours services in the Southern Health Trust has highlighted numerous concerns regarding the way that it operates.  One GP described going to work as “walking into hell”, with the out-of-hours service accommodating a culture of threats and harassment, and poor patient safety.  The information was gathered in a series of workshops which spoke to 32 out-of-hours doctors.  The workshops aimed to assess the overall opinion and morale of the staff involved in the service.

A father-of-six nearly died after doctors repeatedly misdiagnosed his bowel damage for a stomach bug.  Stuart Pashley, from Clay Cross, Derbyshire, was denied treatment by NHS staff on multiple occasions, as doctors continued to diagnose him with a common stomach bug.  One doctor actually told Mr Pashley not to go to hospital as “sickness bugs can close hospital wards and kill people”.

The family of a girl who was left severely brain damaged after an operation has finally been awarded compensation following a twenty-year battle.  Nathalie Sugden was left with serious brain damage as a result of failures during a heart operation at Bristol Royal Infirmary.  The operation was carried out a month after her birth, August 1994, by a surgeon who was struck off for incompetence by the GMC following the failed operation.

The family of a young boy who died shortly after heart surgery in Bristol Children’s Hospital have referred to NHS issues as “disgusting”.  Luke Jenkins (7) was submitted to Bristol Children’s Hospital having suffered a cardiac arrest; he died shortly after heart surgery in March 2012. Luke’s parents recently discovered that his death was not recorded accurately in official figures submitted by the hospital.  They complained to the medical director of the NHS, who replied with an apology admitting that there must have been a data error.

Oxfordshire hospital trust has paid out more than any other hospital authority due to ‘mistakes and blunders’ in 2013.  Figures have revealed that the trust has seen a surge in cases, having risen by 1,000 per cent in less than a decade. When figures were first published in 2003/04, Oxfordshire paid out £2.3m to claimants, which has risen to almost £25m in 2013.  Figures have shown that Oxfordshire has paid out £113.7m to claimants in the last 10 years.

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.

The government has proposed new legislation that will see willful negligence being treated as a criminal offence under NHS changes that are to be revealed next week.  This decision has been made following the recent Mid Staffordshire scandal and others similar, which will see those guilty of “willful neglect” being sentenced to jail.  If found guilty, the offence will be punishable by up to five years in prison under the Mental Capacity Act.