An inquest is scheduled to look into the alleged error made by medical workers when Pat Dawson, 73, passed away just hours after being taken to a hospital in Blackburn, Lancashire.
A family watched their beloved mother die in hospital after medics took the wrong patient’s notes that included a “do not resuscitate” (DNR) form.
Pat Dawson, 73, was taken by ambulance from her home in Rawtenstall, Lancashire, to the Royal Blackburn Hospital on September 19 last year. But just over four hours after she arrived, the much-loved mum was dead.
According to the family, Pat had never before become ill or visited the hospital. Next week is scheduled to see an inquiry into her death.
East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, carried out an investigation and found nurses might have checked the wrong patient records before halting CPR.
“She was taken by ambulance to A&E at Royal Blackburn Hospital around 5 pm with a suspected stomach blockage; by 9:30 pm she was dead,” Pat’s daughter-in-law, Paula Dawson, told LancsLive. “During those short hours, she went into cardiac arrest; the hospital staff checked ‘her records’ and said she was DNR, so she was left to die. Five minutes later, the staff realised the wrong records had been checked and she wasn’t DNR. If she had been resuscitated, who would ever know if she would have survived?”
Paula, who lives with Pat’s son John, said alarm bells were ringing when her husband had a call from the hospital about her apparent DNR form. “I said to him, ‘No, she didn’t have one; she would have told us’,” she continued “But also, she’d never been ill before or in hospital, so she couldn’t have had one. About 20 minutes after Pat died, a senior nurse went to see John in the family room and said, ‘There’s been a mix-up’.”
After Pat died, John sat in the room with her and on three separate occasions she said staff came into the room and did not realise she had passed away. “My husband was in the room with her, a junior doctor entered the room and asked what had brought them to A&E that day. He looked down at the bed and asked John if she always looked like that.
“John was shocked at the comment and explained she had passed away. He couldn’t believe they didn’t know. We then also had another two occasions where people entered the room, one lady asked for some leads to use, and one asked if they could take Pat’s health/ten-ways-banish-high-blood-9621402>blood pressure. I told them they could try, but it wouldn’t do much good.”
That is both terrifying and deeply upsetting, and now hopefully some changes are made from all of this so that it doesn’t happen again, but of course, it will because euthanasia is still used in hospitals to cut down the load.
How frequently do relatives who had their loved ones buried or cremated discover afterwards that it was the wrong body? And I wonder how often patients sign consent forms that they are not fully aware of because they’re drugged up on morphine or painkillers.
Does this type of behaviour still occur in 2024? It’s unbelievable. My confidence in mankind is eroding daily, and things should be getting better, not worse.
An apology won’t bring this lady back, and those who did this should be sent to prison and suspended from the medical profession for life—corporate manslaughter springs to mind.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 