hospital accident advice needed

head_above_water

My mum is in hospital with broken ribs after a fall. she was close to being sent home yesterday and had to have a kitchen assessment to see if she could cope s she lives alone, she is 96. on the way to the kitchen the occupational nurse hit her leg on a door stay while pushing her in the wheelchair. mum said she was going too fast as was scared even before she hit the door. the injury resulted in 17 stitches and was so deep a plastic surgeon had to do the repair inside and out. as she has oedema in her legs this has caused a lot of pain and upset and will delay her release.
i want to make an official complaint, but all i get searching the web is the no blame companies. I do NOT want to make a financial claim, just get the incident properly recorded and make sure the people involved are retrained etc.
Any advice will be appreciated. thanks

Safetyone

Hi
A good starting place would be to contact the CEO (chief exective officer) of the hospital via e-mail or snail mail,this persons name is usually found at the bottom of the hospital stationary appointment letter for example ,

chocomonsta

get in touch with PALS each hospital has one, phone the hospital main number and ask to be put through to them. They will guide you through the process.

So sorry for your poor Mum, hope she gets better soon
x

Safetyone

Pals is a good starting point only drawback with them is they keep it low profile in other words it never goes any higher they investigate it but tend to keep it away from the top people in turn the CEO and others think they have a great hospital as the never get to hear of the issues,, ignore the monkey go stright for the organ grinder if you follow

mary-op

I'm in the process of putting a complaint in to our hospital but with the support of ICAS -they're more independant that PALS from what I gather.
Our solicitor told me that I had to go that route first, if the hospital reply isn't satisfactory then I can try the legal route.

wolfehouse

sorry this has happened.
if it makes you feel any better the worker involved would have had to fill in an incident report form (IR1)
as regular procedure
this then gets kicked up to a committee of managers who examine all accidents and near misses.
and will implement changes/training as part of the review.
you, of course, can put in a complaint - the hospital staff should tell you how to go about making a complaint.
either way your family deserve a full explaination and apology.

[Deleted User]

the thread title states "accident" maybe thats just all it was

Safetyone

As in unplanned unexpected event with out a root cause

MrsManda

head_above_water wrote: »

i want to make an official complaint, but all i get searching the web is the no blame companies. I do NOT want to make a financial claim, just get the incident properly recorded and make sure the people involved are retrained etc.
Any advice will be appreciated. thanks

The hospital will have a complaints procedure through which you can make a formal complaint. A serious incident report should have been made by the staff so the accident should be being investigated already. If you look at the website of the hospital, contact PALS or even ask the ward manager you should be able to find out the formal complaints policy.
Or you can simply write a letter and address it to the complaints team at the hospital.

In your letter detail the incident including dates and how the accident has affected your mum. Then write what you want to be done - an investigation to ensure that procedures were followed and that there was no systemic failure, training/system change if there was a systemic failure.
Also anything you want them to do in terms of contacting you.
It may also be worth asking them to provide you with a copy of the Being Open policy. The Being Open policy is supposed to ensure that the patient/family are kept fully informed about their care including any adverse/near miss incidents

It's likely the hospital will already carrying out a Root Cause Analysis where they investigate the incident to see if there was a systematic failure which can be solved rather than simply an accident.

I hope your mum is now recovering well

clemmatis

woodbine wrote: »

the thread title states "accident" maybe thats just all it was

as Safetyone says...

hence the charity Association Against Medical Accidents

Brassedoff

what is the aim? Compensation or someone saying sorry?