Young women dies - dismissed as a 'time waster' by hospital staff

[Highmoon]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c302e83vrv5o

These news stories seem more and more frequent. This time the young woman had her parents with her and she was still dismissed as a time waster. This makes me so mad. This could so easily be any of our daughters.

I noticed Mumsnet is featuring a petition on medical misogyny. I spotted this on the same day, proving how much a change is needed.

I have many family members who work for the NHS and they really do detest patients and the culture is so normalised at their workplaces that they have no shame in what they say outside of work either. If patients knew what they say about them, the names the staff have for them.

DH has just spent six weeks in hospital on end of life care. I have had to make three complaints to PALS in that time, all about staff attitude. Matron came back from leave to a pile of complaints (she rang me to tell me).

This is almost exactly what happened to my son 2 years ago. They did keep him in but insisted he had gastroenteritis despite coffee granule vomit.

By the time it was acknowledged he likely had a bowel obstruction, sepsis had set in and he had a 17 minute cardiac arrest and was transferred to a hospital with a PICU in multi organ failure including his heart and kidneys. It's a miracle that he survived, though he is now disabled as a result.

Oh I can imagine @FlyingApple

I was admitted to hospital a couple of times with DC1 due to hypermesis gravidarum. About half the doctors were clueless about the condition ("have you tried eating little and often?") and most of the nurses treated me like dirt and made it very clear I was inconveniencing them by not managing to keep food or fluids down and vomiting so often.

DC1 is now in secondary school so this was well before covid.

Some NHS staff are brilliant - capable, professional and compassionate - but IME there is a sizeable minority that deeply dislikes patients and wishes they would just go away already.

I’m one of the 2.5k cases that make up the soon to be published review of maternity care in Nottingham. I am classed as a near miss and my son is alive and well. What has horrified me over the last few weeks is that as more and more information about what happened is coming into the public domain (the Panorama programme this week for instance) there is a slew of comments under every social media post saying “well I had all 3 of my children at City hospital and they are all fine” or “the staff are all marvellous, how much is this costing”. Babies and women died unnecessarily, babies and women were injured unnecessarily and there is tens of thousands of pages of evidence to support this. It’s so bad the police are investigating but Janice had a baby there and it didn’t die so we all need to shut up. I am dreading the publication of the report and the inevitable minimisation that will happen. I had my son 18 years ago and felt so unsafe I did not have any more children. This had been going on for decades. I got off very lightly with just a near death experience compared to other women who had the misfortune to have a baby in Nottingham. The slavish response that the NHS is untouchable and anyone who works there is a saint needs to stop.

My DD, 19/20 at time visited A&E multiple times in agony, dismissed as exaggerating and couldn’t possibly have gallstones, eventually scanned, gallbladder removed the next day.

@GreenSmallBird im a midwife, i wasn’t surprised by anything in that Panaroma episode. Saddened, but not surprised. Its nationwide, not just Nottingham.

Well, medics can be charged with gross negligence manslaughter just like drivers can.

I've just checked and medics can be charged with gross negligence manslaughter.

If I leave someone disabled using my car, I am on the hook for criminal charges of causing serious injury by driving dangerously (section 1A Road Traffic Act 1988). What law sanctions medics and nurses the same way?

Quite rightly but it takes forever,, they say it's rarely one person's failure which is always their,defense, notes go missing, results go missing, staff leave, documentation is altered, conversations are denied, employers are blamed for poor vetting and training. A nurse on the other hand is much easier to get rid of.

We called 999 when my mum couldn't stand and blood pressure low. We were told she was making a fuss and could certainly stand up, and to walk out of the house please if we insisted she must go to a&e.

She later died on a trolley in a corridor in her 50s.

Very sad story about the young lady in the op- just starting out in life and completely failed. Her parents did all they could.

This makes my blood boil.

I have been in A&E a lot in the last couple of years because of heart problems. One hospital sent me home when I was having a heart attack which was later diagnosed and treated elsewhere. I told them I was not happy about this and I really do think if I had been a man they would have admitted me.

Once one person says "It is not a heart attack" or "This is just gastroenteritis" it gets handed down as gospel and no-one stops to rethink. It is a very dangerous attitude.

I put in a complaint to the original hospital and to be fair they investigated it thoroughly and changed the protocols and training in the department based on my case. But it is so basic - it should never have happened.

Yep - rare as rocking horse shit to pin that on them though. Dr Bawa-Garba was the last notable case iirc, when someone died of sepsis on her watch. Again, the doctors’ response was not “how terrible for that poor child who died” but “waah! Consequences are SO unfair! We’re too busy to not be negligent!”

And whilst I would not let Dr B-G (or any GNM convicted doctor) within spitting distance of DS in a medical situation, it’s notable that the senior consultant left her in the shit, clearly unable to cope with her workload having recently returned from maternity leave, fucked off to Ireland and never returned.

Patients really are untermensch in the eyes of many NHS clinicians.

Once one person says "It is not a heart attack" or "This is just gastroenteritis" it gets handed down as gospel and no-one stops to rethink. It is a very dangerous attitude.

This is what was raised in the serious incident report after my son's cardiac arrest. It is pretty much what happened and I actually had no idea to the extent until I was given a copy of the report over a year later. The surgical registrar was still insisting that it was just gastroenteritis when he had a NG tube placed and they were draining large amounts of smelly, yellow liquid which was very clearly faeces by the smell. I'm not a doctor and even I knew what it was at the time, I have no idea what the surgical registrar was thinking. Even concerns from nurses were dismissed by him.

Similar experience - I couldn’t get any doctors to take me seriously - they blamed my symptoms on menopause and claimed I was overreacting. Ended up needing several major surgeries and would have had an aneurysm due to a previously undetected arterial birth defect if I hadn’t advocated for myself. Women’s illnesses are often attributed to hysteria, anxiety, etc. and, once you’re of menopausal age, they blame that.

It's not just women who are treated badly and let down, it happens to male patients too.

The article and subsequent posts are really shocking to read!

Although I agree that medical misogyny is rife this does also happen to men. About 15 years ago my DS then in his early 20s kept getting this awful pain in his stomach that was making him vomit. He went to the GP then he went to A&E. Nobody ever did a scan to see what was causing it.

It went on for months and I think he went to about 6 or 7 different A&Es (he was living elsewhere then ended up moving in with us). One A&E was going to do a scan and then didn't for some reason. Eventually one hospital decided it was appendicitis and admitted him. They scanned his appendix the night before and saw it was fine.

Further investigation followed and they found he had 4 kidneys. One of them had burst, and that was causing the pain and vomiting. They had him in PDQ to remove the dead kidney. Had he been scanned the very first time it would have saved all the subsequent trauma.

It always makes me laugh on Casualty when everyone seems to get a CT/ MRI or ultrasound on admission, what ever they've gone in for. I assume it's a cost-saving exercise 😠

Yes, but women are subjected to specific types of being dismissed that men are not, such as gynae issues and obstetric issues. Women have non-obgyn issues misdiagnosed as obgyn issues and vice-versa, which never happens to men. Women's pain is more often dismissed, and black women even more so, meaning that we are less likely to even be assessed.

It is worth pointing out that these stories make headlines because they are rare. I took my DH to A&E because he had amnesia after a head injury and they were all over it almost immediately. I mean the face covered in crusted blood probably helped but in the end it was just concussion. They were caring and careful.
My father died in the supposedly wonderful German healthcare system and I had to confirm whether we owed anything for the disgusting butchery. The nurse said "oh his toe tag didn't have a balance on it so you're good".

Let’s not even talk about CAMHs or mental health, it’s absolutely shocking.

i had a psychotic episode 5 years ago, and then a diagnosis (private because the care was so shit no one followed it up), and now the GP is refusing to prescribe my antipsychotics that keep me well because I’m too ‘complex’ but I’m not complex enough for the mental health team, who told me they wouldn’t see me and to continue paying for my meds. So until I go into psychosis again, I have to pay for these drugs and have it written in my notes im a difficult patient!

And actually during the psychotic episode I couldn’t see a psych for days because it was a Friday afternoon and no one was around! Didn’t advise my husband to take me to A & E, no ‘just take her home and we’ll call at some point’

Jesus!

I think that the diagnosis of heart attack is a problem in women as they do not present with the clasic symptoms that men do. But A&E staff should know this.
When they finally did an angiogram at another hospital my right coronary artery was blocked to 94% at one point and needed a stent. It is very remiss that they failed to diagnose as I had a known history of heart problems which I told them. I felt mildly despairing.

It is not rare. At all.

The headlines are the ones that make it through or where the family and friends have the strength to kick up a fuss and shout until they're heard.

A lot of people are broken by their experiences and can't raise the energy to advocate for themselves and their loved ones.

On this thread alone, several people have stories about themselves/family members.

I'm not sure it is that rare, especially considering the recent introductions of Martha's rule and Jess' rule.

They don't all make the headlines. Especially if they survive.