boy dies after calling 999 from ward

[ohdobuckup]

I just cannot believe this appalling story, can't link but it was in most papers and headlined in Daily Mail.

Inquest being held into the case of a young man who appears to have suffered severe neglect at Tooting hospital, with 'lazy' nurses and indifferent doctors allowing him to die of thirst because he was confused following major operation.The poor sod even dialled 999 to get help, police arrived but were ushered off the ward

How the fuck has nursing become such a corrupted profession?
I am an ex-nurse, mostly Mental Health, and not that ancient either, and whilst not claiming any perfection on my part, and have had lapses of judgement and bad days too, I am truly appalled by this one.

Any other nurses/exes seen this?

OMG. What a collection of absolute arseholes and jobsworths. If even ONE of them had done their job properly that poor boy needn't have died - disgusting. :(

This is terrible - an example of what happens when individual and collective responsibility towards a patients safety is neglected.

I am baffled as to how a consultant and anesthetist could operate on a patient without a full medical history - this patient would have required a high level of postop care - potentially a few days in a high dependency area to ensure his condition was carefully monitored.
The patient should have been assessed by Doctors,Nurses,Anaesthetist and his chart reviewed by a Pharmacist.
There would have been a daily ward round and not one person amongst all those above knew that he had such a serious condition - terrible

I'm impressed by the Mail. A powerful summary there, pointing the finger of blame exactly where it needs to be - and those higher up in the pecking order should also take responsibility. Managers and senior medical and nursing staff are responsible for their juniors. For employing people with such shitty attitudes, for failing to monitor their behaviour and for allowing a system so full of holes someone was killed as a result.

Oh God have just read ariadnes account - they knew he had this condition and still when they knew how high his sodium levels were they failed to act - I feel sick reading that.

"?Kane Gorny died as a result of dehydration contributed to by neglect.? Wow. More like caused by neglect, surely. Even though his damaged hormone system was the base cause, he wouldn't have died if they'd kept up his meds - so neglect was the actual cause, not the condition.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2172642/Kane-Gorny-Coroner-blames-incompetence-NHS-staff-patient-dies-dehydration.html#ixzz20byqenI9

And you know what pisses me off the most is that only ONE nurse has been affected jobwise by this, and she was probably the most junior member of the people supposedly caring for him.

I was shocked and saddened to hear of this on the news. I am now in tears reading the account of failure that caused his death. DS is 22. It is such a waste of a young life.

Only one person has been demoted as a result of his death and she's still working in the NHS -what about the rest of them?

She's been demoted to health care assistant??

How about being removed from patient care completely? Or [gasp] sacked?

What a morale booster for the health care assistants..

What parallel universe does the management of the NHS live in?

You are far more likely to be demoted to HCA if you raise concerns about patient care than if you treat patients like shit. Sad but true.

I am going to write to my MP stating that stronger action should be taken against the staff concerned. I hope some of you will too.

Ask them to retool protocol so that nobody would dream of not following procedures correctly. If there are procedures....

This is a tragic story yet not surprising poor guy and poor family

I am a consultant. on my dcs admission to hospital recently I seriously contemplated calling 999 to try and get us an ambulance to take us somewhere for treatment I also imagined myself grabbing my child and running to A &E to see whether I could persuade them to do something. to be clear there was no dispute as to the diagnosis or treatment needed.

This was in a large teaching hospital which would pride itself on it's excellence

It's only going to get worse though (IMHO).

Probably an unpopular view, but my guess is that it's more to do with the culture and systems in the hospital concerned, rather than the individuals. The vast majority of people are not heartless, but they are restricted and ground down by the conditions in which they work. The NHS and medicine in general can be extremely difficult to work in. Its easy to blame an individual, everyone else gets off the hook, but that will rarely change anything. It needs a huge culture shift IMHO.

And in my limited experience, a general DGH can be vastly safer than a large teaching hospital. They tend to be staffed by people who communicate and support each other, rather than compete with each other.

Culture is key and systems can either make a culture good or keep it really bad.

Shocking and it is not unique

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2177969/How-hundreds-patients-dying-thirst-hospital-The-story-22-year-old-died-hospital-dehydration-shocked-Britain-But-tragedy-horrifyingly-common.html

I haven't read the whole thread but have horror stories of my own, which I won't repeat as there have been so many. I just wanted to say that the NHS is under resourced and now that this evil coalition have come in, they are demanding huge cuts in budgets and selling off the NHS to any "willing provider" so things can only get worse. The coalition will not rest until all public services are privatised, and is going as fast as it can to do this, so that if a Labour govt ever got elected, they would not be able to change things.

Also this coalition is stopping legal aid in private law cases from April 2013, which will mean that no-one will be able to sue a hospital for incompetency unless they are prepared to take the case to court themselves, and how many people are going to feel confident enough to do this, and of course the NHS will have lawyers galore to defend the case.

Sorry Nananina what people are talking about on here has nothing to do with the coalition (IMHO)

What really struck me was how few people knew what they were supposed to be doing (the unpalatable alternative is that they knew but just really didn't care!!)

Well that's debatable because if there are insufficient staff on duty to properly care for patients, then that is due to that hospital being under resourced, and that is because of the slashing of budgets by the coalition, and it is certainly relevant that the parents of this poor man will not get legal aid to sue the Primary Care Trust after April 2013. Again that is a coalition decision.

I don't however want to hi jack the thread into a political one. I just thought it worth pointing out and I do know from personal experience the horror of incompetent/uncaring HCPs on wards, and that of course is nothing to do with politics.

My son's best friend had a little boy of 7 who was complaining of headaches and the school kept sending him home, and the parents kept taking him to the GP who told them to give him paracetomol. Eventually the GP referred him to hospital simply because of the number of times the parents were turning up with the child complaining of headaches and feeling sick. The hospital kept him in overnight the first time and discharged him with ibuprofen - 4 more hospital admissions -same thing happened. The child's father eventually demanded that the hospital do a brain scan and the Jnr Reg on duty that night refused and the father made the dr sign to say that he was refusing, which he did. He was then transferred to a specialist children's Hospital where a scan revealed a brain tumour and he died within 3 days.

Sorry I am not trying to compete or anything, this just came into my mind.

truly amazing story. The lad is on the front of todays Sun

My experiences were shortly before the coalition came to power. It is not simply a question of resourcing, it is about the culture in some parts of some hospitals. It is fundamentally a lack of respect for patients.

I agree with you aaarghmiddleage though I know it isn't a popular view. The thing is of course thousands of people go to hospital and are treated well and their health is restored but we only ever hear about the cases where something goes wrong. My sisters both work in the NHS and do 12 hour days and always go the extra mile for patients and are very caring, but they do complain about the systems in place (or rather not in place) and the culture and they are ground down by the stresses and strains of the job. They think highly of their colleagues too, so I just think it needs pointing out that mistakes will always happen - nothing is 100%

It's the same with social workers (I am a retired one) no-one hears about the way social workers work hard in a highly stressful job to support families with difficulties etc etc but as soon as there is a child tragedy it is all over the news. It's almost as though the social workers themselves have killed the child. It isn't possible to eliminate risk, no matter what, even if you lived with these families you couldn't be awake for 24 hours!

This doesn't mean I don't feel enormously sorry about the young man in the case and how he was failed by the staff (although sorry I don't trust the DM - ever)