To make a complaint to the hospital?

[1990shopefulftm]

Long story short, my waters broke and I was left for 36 hours before being induced by drip due to staffing issues, whilst experiencing high blood pressure during this time.
My son was then born and developed suspected sepsis and I then developed it myself. I ve been in hospital now 5 days post labour and have been on the same blood pressure medication throughout that time, needed an iron infusion after the iron tablets they gave me didn't work and I ve needed antibiotics.
I ve been quite distressed in the hospital at times due to experiencing parts of early labour alone and things not going to plan.

They ve refused to let me be discharged last night as planned due to a high reading but have made no medication adjustments, am I justified in making a complaint with the combination of factors in my early labour leading to this and for the hospital not thinking that my mental health could be the reason for my blood pressure issues?

Absolutely and please make sure you let CQC know too. Wishing you and your baby well.

Tell them all this tomorrow when they do their rounds.
Ask them what they are doing to get you to the stage where you will be discharged.
Ask them why your medication is not working.

Complain.

The hospital is the worst place to be when you are not well.

Also, long term (speaking from experience here), you will regret not raising the issues now if you able to.

Has your baby finished antibiotic treatment? Is the baby fit for discharge? If so then you could discharge yourself. The midwife should do your blood pressure during the home visit with your history.

The blood pressure issue is probably related to your hormones and not the medication strength. Some things take time.

@Strawberrylemincake I hadn't even thought about the cqc thank you.
@LolalovesLondon I had a conversation with a doctor after they refused to let me go, i ve been told I will be seen probably on the ward rounds this morning.
@Wattleon yes anywhere feels better than here does at the moment.
@SnuggyBuggy yes he's finished his treatment yesterday afternoon and his doctors are happy for him to go home. If no luck with this ward round I will certainly self discharge.

@fallfallfall I ve given it a week almost, how long would be appropriate to be in hospital on something in tablet form for? I ve been getting quite unpleasant memories of my labour back the past day or so so I m conscious that staying here is going to do me further damage in that sense.

I'm so sorry and actually I'm sat in NICU with my baby right now due to sepsis and my labour was identical to yours. You've had a terrible time and so far I've been treated like shit at my hospital. Do what you need to do.

Complain, I wish I had done, I ended up with ptsd through a badly managed induction & ending up in high dependency with my liver & kidneys failing. Then getting dumped in a room on post natal ward & receiving no care whatsoever. In the morning sort all your stuff out & tell them you are discharging yourself, as long as your baby is well they can't stop you self discharging, then once you are home make a complaint, you should be sent home with your hospital notes to give to your midwife, get them copied so you have proof of your complaint.

Btw they have discharged me with blood clotting injections, paracetamol, ibuprofen, antibiotics and iron tablets. I'm not sure if any of it will be different on your part but that's what they discharged me with.

My first birth experience sounds almost identical to this and it also left me really traumatised. I hope you're home tomorrow and I would complain.

Sounds weirdly similar to my birth.

On day 5 I packed up my things and left. I told them I was leaving and they told to me wait for the consultant to talk to me, and I said no thanks, I've been waiting for all of this for too long, I'm going now. Off I went.

Day 5 was when my baby was able to be discharged. If your baby hasn't been discharged yet then it might be a bit trickier for you to do this.

@Neongenesis they agreed last night that baby can be discharged but not gotten any paperwork or anything yet for him.

I m so sorry to those who have experienced similar bad treatment to me.

If they've said the baby can go home you could always just tell them that you'll be leaving at 9 tomorrow, or whatever time, and if the paperwork for baby isn't ready by that time then you're sorry but you're going anyway.

That's if you actually do want to go home. I was bloody desperate to go home for several reasons, despite the fact that I was still quite ill, so I went against medical advice and left. I obviously would never tell you that you should do that - I'm just making you aware that you don't actually have to stay in hospital. It's not as if they've detained you and your baby. It's your own choice.

Speak to PALS tomorrow morning and they should be able to sort this out for you and get things moving. Nust phone the hospital main number and ask to be put through. Then after that you cam consider whether to make a formal complaint.
Tbh if no one complains then nothing changes

@Harmarsuperstar my hospitals pals service is answerphone only at the moment unfortunately so I can't be redirected through to them.
@NeonGenesis my dad self discharged before his death so it's not ever a decision I d take lightly (he knew he was likely to die and didn't want them buying him just days so left ) it feels like they re fixated on my blood pressure when my anxiety and exhaustion is making the situation worse , if I can get the antibiotics and the blood pressure medicine I feel confident I might actually start to get better at home.

Complain. Similar happened to me in that there was neglect and I had a horrific experience which left me traumatised. Complaining really helped me mentally as a full review was carried out and I got an apology and promise that it would not happen again. Very important now I’m pregnant again. I’m still anxious but I’d hate to imagine how I would be if I hadn’t complained. It’s as much for yourself as the next woman as sometimes it can prevent a reoccurrence for someone else.

Same experience here some years back. I was discharged after a week, blood pressure took a few more days to settle but was then back to normal and still is

Ask to speak to the Director of midwives. Tell her you want the circs of your labour fully investigated and with immediacy you expect your quality if care overall to improve and and a full explanation from the consultant in charge of your care about being messed about and whether you seen in optimum dose of medication.

What happens if your blood pressure gets worse? Will it be slow and give you time to get emergency treatment. Or is it likely to be a cardiac arrest, with little chance of survival at home?
What is causing the BP? The BP medication may not control it fully, do you need a cardiac review?
Are the risks reducing over time?

You can discharge yourself and just risk it, but it doesn’t sound like you know the answers to the above. It’s still your choice though.

I think you need to ask someone to explain to you what’s going on.....possibly there are reasons for some of it.

When your waters break the national guidelines say the baby should have been born within I think it’s 96 hours. Standard practice is to start induction 24 hrs after waters break, the reason for the delay is to see if you go into labour yourself. So yes there was a delay of 12 hours which I understand is frustrating but if they have staffing issues and due to covid this will be more of an issue than normal and therefore it’s not safe to induce you it’s better to wait another 12 hours. The hospital I work at has 300 nurses and midwives off due to covid at the minute.

It’s not unusual with a high reading to not change the medication straight away, depends on the reading. But to ask you to stay in and just monitor over the next few hours. If there’s a knee jerk change of medication then you run the risk of being over medicated amd then having too low blood pressure. This is especially true postnatally when High BP tends to fall back to normal levels.

But yes, stress could definitely cause BP issues, normally just the systolic reading, not the diastolic reading though. They can’t refuse discharge, you can leave against advice.

Hope,you get home today.

Hi OP, first congratulations on the birth of your son, I'm glad he's doing well. And second I'm sorry for your poor experience.

I agree with @Sparky888 - it's not just high blood pressure, it can lead to really dangerous consequences.

That being said, you are fully right to request and have fully informed answers to your question.

I would start now by speaking to your midwife and ask that at handover (in the next hour) she handover to the team that you want to see the shift leader/ward manager immediately. Speak to her about your concerns first. Also tell her you want to see the consultant at ward round, not the team. Don't be fobbed off.

If that doesn't happen, or you don't get anywhere with that, contact the head of midwifery. You can call switch board of the hospital and ask to speak to her (likely get through to a PA). If that doesn't work ask to speak to complaints or PALS.

You could also try calling the directorate manager for women's and children's, or for maternity - again ask switch.

Finally if you get no where, call your CCG.

CQC will be interested but they won't do anything to solve your problem today. They will be interested in your experience but hold no power to get you seen by the right people/discharged.

@JacobReesMogadishu yes it's my systolic reading that's between 140-150 consistently after a week of a calcium channel blocker, my diastolic one is always around 85.

Oh sweet this must’ve fucking awful and makes me so angry on your behalf.
My DH was told I couldn’t discharged as I was ill and needed treatment. My extremely mild mannered DH pointed out that at home he could at least give me paracetamol and antibiotics from our GP, more than they had managed for over 9 hours in the 24 hours after a c-section due to sepsis. I only got them as a passing physio saw the pain in my face.
I had my first ever panic attack wailing and moaning on an open ward and no-one helped.
It takes strength to complain - can you get an advocate ie partner parent etc to help?

Definitely complain and also let CQC know. My poor mum almost died two weeks ago as paramedics and then drs were focused on her blood pressure and ECG; they didn't listen to her that the pain was in her abdomen.

She was transferred to another hospital, 40min journey on blue lights, she was in agony, then was scanned, that hospital decided it actually was her stomach, resulting in another long bumpy journey on blue lights back to original hospital and straight into theatre for emergency surgery.

Her dr told her if she hadn't spotted the problem - her intestines had wrapped around scar tissue and died - that mum would have died very soon.

Wound was not checked until 4 days after surgery, nurse who treated mum was horrified as it should have been changed daily, and found an infection, cellulitis. Dr prescribed antibiotics, it took 7 hrs for mum to get them, despite the dr assuring me she would receive them immediately. It took 3 phonecalls from me to hurry up the antibiotics, the nurses were rude, no empathy for my mum at all. Mum was also in a good deal of pain and the very little morphine they allowed did nothing for the constant pain.

After 10 days mum was discharged with her infection, despite telling the nurses that she lived alone and she had just come off her feeding tube, had diarhorrea and nausea.

I am now juggling a full time job and caring for her, infection is not getting better but her GP yesterday tripled her oromorph and gave her more antibiotics and last night she actually slept and pain better.

Sorry for long post, needed to get it off my chest! Wish you well, OP.