Medical negligence claim (false discharge & aspiration) NHS

[SorryToBotherYou28]

Hello, I was wondering if anyone could give me advice or maybe share their experience of taking action due to medical negligence (or if it's worth pursuing). I'll try to shorten the story as it's a long one...

My mother before the hospital was a very fit, very active and relatively healthy 82 year old.

It revolves around my mother, she had a very long and difficult stay in hospital, all in all 4 months, she went in with an infection and delirium with diarrhoea and extreme sickness, there was no urgency to get down to what was going on with her and she was in for 3 weeks, then suddenly she had a massive bleed and it was from an ulcer. She nearly lost her life and had to have an operation. She came through that into the ICU, but the nurses were all coughing in the ward (she was in a side room) and she caught COVID from them.

She nearly died a few times due to that, but she eventually came out of the ICU into a ward on a feeding tube.
She was assessed and put onto a soft pureed diet. She had an OK swallow, but the assessor was very worried about her being conscious. She had the lingering affects of ICU delirium and also dehydration (another thing that happened)

A nurse came in with tablets, she went to tip them into her mouth when she wasn't conscious enough, we were visiting and said she wasn't awake enough to do that, she looked at us then did it anyway. She started choking and coughing and then carried on for hours afterwards. We called in the head nurse and they said it was nothing to do with the tablets.

We visited everyday for the full 5 hours. When we went the next day she was coughing again. We asked the nurses and they said she hadn't all day before we were there. We thought we were going mad TBH. It carried on this way the next few days. We brought up the cough to the Dr who said it was long COVID, she hadn't coughed for weeks since she tested negative in the ICU (4/5 weeks).

Anyway, they discharged her suddenly on September 27th a few days later and a week after the tablets. She was discharged to a rehab centre. The next day we went to visit in the morning and an ambulance was there taking her back into hospital.
She had aspirated pneumonia and was released in a terrible condition. When she was finally placed after resus we were called in to be told essentially it was all over. She had a lung that wasn't functional and her heart was failing.

After all that we refused to leave, we stayed day and night in turns as we no longer trusted the hospital. A few times they tried to move her to palliative drugs but my daughter said they had to actually try.

She did finally get out of hospital on December 6th, she's eating normally, breathing normally and walking with a frame (which is better than expected but worse than when she went in in July).

Just wondering if there's a case in the failed discharge? We have put in an extended complaint through PALS, which was it's own thing with the governor of the hospital meeting us and asking us to maybe take a few things off the complaint and then it being a whitewash.

Thanks for any help, it's been an awful time. My daughter who has been there everyday for her nan is suffering with PTSD and we're all still trying to make sense of it all.

I'm sorry, I fail to see what not being bombed has to do with this case at all.

Yes it's free, but the so called care almost killed her 5 times over.

No, but they could mask when treating already vulnerable patients.

I'm sorry you're going through this. But you are unreasonable about assuming she caught Covid from the nurses. Some people cough with Covid, some don't. And you can get it from anyone. She might be ght have gotten it from you.

Being in a side room doesn't stop someone picking up covid, the mask and isolation protocol is something you could discuss with the health authority, health minister, infection control.

It would be more productive to focus on the specifics of your mums case. Unfortunately Covid is circulating, no-one and nowhere is immune whatever precautions they take, it is just one of many infections which can complicate other conditions.

For example, were the pills given in line with the slt assessment, did they trigger an aspiration and was she assessed for aspiration pneumonia before discharge,

We didn't have, we were the only ones to visit and we tested every day as my daughter is vulnerable as well.
She caught the COVID in hospital, it was everywhere in the hospital at the time, in a small assessment ward 9 patients had it.

But that's not really the crux of it, the false discharge is the big one.

Thank you, yes the COVID isn't our focus, just something else that happened.

Yes, so she didn't give them in accordance. On a sheet of paper above her bed it said that the patient must be sitting up and fully conscious before giving food/water or tablets. We told her this as well before she proceeded to then put them in her mouth a tip the water in.

And no, she wasn't assessed for aspirated pneumonia before discharge, even though we brought up her symptoms of it for a week and each time we did was dismissed as it being something else and nothing to do with the tablets, they kept saying nothing happened then.

Are you focusing on her not being well and stable enough to have been transferred to the rehab unit? That's where I would start. If the sign said she was on food, water and tablets I guess she was assessed by speech therapy for her swallowing. There would have been other signs other than coughing if she had aspiration pneumonia, that's what I would be asking and about the aftercare and assessments once she started coughing. Who diagnosed the aspiration, when it started may be hard to establish. Glad to hear she's recovering.

Yes, that's the main issue, the discharge when she wasn't in any condition to be moved.
She had pneumonia, she was outside waiting in the ambulance for transport for over an hour in the cold, she was left in a place where they didn't even have a doctor on call for the weekend.

It was diagnosed on re-admittance, before that nothing, they said it was either long COVID or COPD. We did see the aspiration, before that she hadn't even coughed once in weeks, we saw it happen and called in nurses (no dr as it was a weekend) and was told nothing happened. After that she was coughing constantly whenever we were there.

I'd look at her notes from the start of her ward admission, the salt assessment, the day she was given water when she was drowsy, there is always an on call doctor at weekends in NHS acute hospitals, who diagnosed pneumonia in hospital, what symptoms, tests and treatment, who declared her fit for transfer, at the other end in rehab who declared her unfit and sent her back to hospital. Ime rarely is there one person to blame, it's a chain of events involving many people,

Thanks for this.

We actually demanded a doctor when it happened and was told by the nurse on the ward there was no need as there was nothing wrong.

We have all of the records and agree, it's a chain of events.

She was diagnosed on re-admittance. At the rehab they couldn't get her to saturate and there was no doctor so the head nurse there called an ambulance to see what they thought. They couldn't get her to either and her chest sounded bad when they listened so they said the paramedics agreed with the nurse she wasn't fit to be out.