Mum Injured while at the Hospital.

lindos90

Wilma33 wrote: »

Have you tired contacting PALS at the hospital concerned?

Yes, on the day it happened a PALs volunteer came to my mum and gave her a complaints leaflet (it was this volunteer who took my mum to A&E after the incident, who aparently the hospital are unable to trace). AFAIK the complaints are delt with through pals.

Becles

I would try PALS.

I saw the out of hours GP service at the hospital one weekend and was diagnosed with a kidney infection. Although I had told the nurse practitioner I was allergic to penicillin and he wrote it on the form, he forgot to tell the doctor when the prescription was written and the doctor never read the notes properly.

I went home and took a dose of the antibiotic, went into anaphylactic shock and ended up going back to the hospital in an ambulance.

I got in touch with PALS who helped with my complaint. I got an apology from the doctor on duty at the time and they said that the procedures had been changed and staff had been given retraining on drug allergies to prevent it happening again. I was happy with that.

Wilma33

lindos90 wrote: »

Yes, on the day it happened a PALs volunteer came to my mum and gave her a complaints leaflet (it was this volunteer who took my mum to A&E after the incident, who aparently the hospital are unable to trace). AFAIK the complaints are delt with through pals.

Contact PALS yourself to track down the volunteer who helped your mum.

lindos90

Thank you for all your responses. Its certainly put things into perspective I guess. At least my mum is still alive. I feel really bad about wanting to peruse this now, there are much worse situations out there.

lindos90

Wilma33 wrote: »

Contact PALS yourself to track down the volunteer who helped your mum.

I believe its PALs who are dealing with the complaint.

I have suggested they look at their rotas for that day to narrow down who it could have been, they say thats not possible. I also suggested they look at CCTV from that day as they would see my mum walk into the hospital, and also see the volunteer approach my mum, give her the leaflet and wheel her round to A&E. But they say the hospital does not have CCTV in public areas as it 'contravenes human rights'

TooSad

lindos90 wrote: »

But they say the hospital does not have CCTV in public areas as it 'contravenes human rights'

I would say that your being fobbed off. I cannot believe am A&E department wouldn't have CCTV, given the highly charged nature of what they do and the "clients" they have especially at a weekend!
I can understand not having CCTV in treatment areas, but public areas !!!! Sounds like B.S! Happy to stand corrected if I'm wrong, but my gut instinct is that they are making excuses!

TooSad

I would contact PAL's but from experience they arent that great at my local hospital, yes they kicked !!! when the hospital still hadn't conducted mums post mortem 4 days after her death. They also alerted the Coroner that we disagreed with what had been put on death certificate which led to the inquest.
However they advised my dad that we didn't need a solicitor for inquest and could represent ourselves, having had the inquest in may this advise was inherently wrong. There was no way we could have done what our solicitor & barrister did.

*onlyme*

lindos90 wrote: »

Thank you for all your responses. Its certainly put things into perspective I guess. At least my mum is still alive. I feel really bad about wanting to peruse this now, there are much worse situations out there.

Don't feel bad and if you want to pursue it, go for it, you have every right to. If it stops from even just 1 person going through what your mum has / is going through, then surely it is worth it.

I wish you all the best and hope your mum receives the apology she deserves.

birkee

lindos90 wrote: »

Good grief, what a terrible experience for you Birkee. So you made a complaint and didnt get anywhere? Its just so fustrating.

Thanks for that lindos,
it was pretty grim, followed by regaining conciousness to find myself totally paralysed, unable to even open my eyes, and realising there was a crash team working on me.
That was followed a little later, when some clown clamped an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth, and had forgotton to turn on the oxygen. Two breaths later, and I just managed to turn my head away and say "can't breath", but it was all I could manage.

And they wonder why there are sudden deaths in hospitals.

p.s. In case any of you are wondering what caused such a calamity, a local anaesthetic that was supposed to be injected into my spine, was injected into the cerebro spinal fluid, in which the spine and brain is floating. They gave my brain a local anaesthetic, and they had to take over the life support in it's place.

babymoo

You won't ever get a letter of apology or acceptance that they did something wrong, this would make it far to easy for you to sue them then. Best thing you can do is contact a medical negligence lawyer and get them to write on your behalf. The hospital nearly killed me 3.5 years ago and I am still fighting it 3.5 years later or an apology.

It will be a long wait I can assure you.