A woman who died after being left for 10 hours on a hospital trolley in a corridor in A&E was ‘abandoned in her most vulnerable moment,’ an inquest was told.
Tamara Davis, 31, died of sepsis after being left struggling to breathe and coughing up blood in a busy A&E department in December 2022.
She had been rushed to the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton after complaining of breathing difficulties and collapsing at home.
Miss Davis had been diagnosed with a respiratory infection and placed in a resuscitation room and given oxygen.
But she was moved into the corridor when another patient needed the room and, although her condition became progressively worse, she was left on a trolley in the busy corridor.
At one stage, 20 patients were being treated in the hospital corridor.
She was eventually taken back to a resuscitation cubicle when her health worsened, and from there she was sent to critical care. She died the following day.
Joanne Andrews, West Sussex coroner, said she was going to write to the Department of Health and NHS England to voice her concerns over the use of corridors in the treatment of patients.
Recording a conclusion of death by natural causes, she said: ‘In relation to the use of corridors, this does to me create a substantial concern.’
However, she said: ‘There is no evidence of the patient having been placed in a corridor caused or contributed to her death in these circumstances.’
The inquest heard Miss Davis had been ‘abandoned’ by a healthcare system stretched to the limit.
In a statement, her sister, Miya, told the inquest: ‘In the few hours [she was in A&E], she was being made to fend for herself. She was abandoned in that corridor at her most vulnerable moments, coughing up blood and suffering from diarrhoea.’
Dr Andrew Leonard, the consultant who treated Tamara in the corridor, said that although Tamara was negative for sepsis on arrival on December 10, her deterioration would have meant she was ‘diagnosable’ at 4.30 pm the following day.
Her increasing health wasn’t reported to the medical staff until after 6 pm; thus, that’s why she wasn’t diagnosed until then.
He said he would have ‘liked to see a sepsis screening’ earlier rather than when she had deteriorated even further.
Dr Leonard said: ‘Anyone being looked after in a corridor is a concern because it is a failure of normal care processes.’
He said the statements from the family about how they felt Tamara had been failed were ‘heartbreaking’.
He said: ‘Unfortunately, we live in a world where more corridor care has become increasingly the norm in the last few years and that is a tragedy and not something any doctor or nurse would say is a good idea but is a result of pressures on the system.’
He said he was ‘unhappy’ Tamara was in a corridor but there ‘was nowhere else to put the patients’.
Of the delay in the sepsis diagnosis, Dr Leonard said: ‘I’m not sure on the balance of probabilities would it have made a difference to the outcome.’
Alice Edmondson, a senior nurse on duty at the time, said, ‘We’d never move anyone to a corridor out of choice. Nobody should be nursed in a corridor.
‘I really want the family to know that I as a senior nurse feel upset every day that people are in the corridor when they shouldn’t be.’
Tamara had been suffering from cold-like symptoms and breathing difficulties and had collapsed at home on the evening of December 10, 2022.
The inquest was told her partner, Raphael Ifill, had desperately phoned emergency services five times to try and get an ambulance.
He arranged for a friend to transport Tamara the three miles to Royal Sussex County Hospital when they failed to arrive.
At 11:14 p.m., Tamara, a resident of Brighton, was admitted and transferred right away to an A&E resuscitation cubicle, where she was given oxygen.
IV fluids, paracetamol, and antibiotics were administered to her. She was moved out onto the trolley and into the corridor around 5:30 am when her vital signs improved and another patient needed the room.
The inquest heard Tamara spent the next 10 hours on the trolley with other sick patients all around her.
An inquest heard that doctors neglected to give her the second dosage of antibiotics that she was supposed to get.
Throughout the day, her condition worsened, and she started having diarrhoea and coughing up blood.
It was said at the hearing that her sister Miya had to assist her to the loo and change her soiled linens as no staff members were there to assist.
Tamara’s condition deteriorated further, according to the inquiry, and at 3:20 pm, she was returned to a resuscitation room.
A medical team was contacted, but it took three hours for her to have a full examination. She was then moved to an intensive care bed and placed on a mechanical ventilator.
Tamara had been afflicted with the severe H1N1 flu strain; it was discovered later.
The inquest was told that Tamara failed to respond to treatment and her condition continued to deteriorate in intensive care and she died at around 11.15 am on December 13.
Sepsis and multiple organ failure caused by influenza and bronchopneumonia were listed as the cause of death.
The UK is on its knees and more and more people are floating in. When will the gate shut?
Now it seems that if we want good, timely treatment, we’re going to have to pay for it ourselves. That doesn’t stop us from being bitter, though, considering most of us have paid for our NHS treatment all our lives, and if we have to go private, it means that we are effectively paying for our healthcare twice.
The problem is, even if we do go private, then everyone goes private and we will still wait as long because so many people will be doing the same thing.
There are a lot of individuals arriving on boats, which exacerbates the issue and contributes nothing to the system that we Britons fund.
But it would also be good if our GPs did the job that they were paid to do, and it might help if most of them could string a sentence together without a foreign accent so that we could understand them—that might alleviate some pressure.
The foreign employees at my surgery don’t even know how to spell, so I have to interpret their emails. Not very professional, and one employee wanders around in his socks without shoes when you visit the doctor. This is unhygienic and unprofessional, and if you mention anything, they become quite defensive. They might walk around like that in their country of origin, but they now live in the UK and ‘when in Rome!’
GPs need to improve because most GPs now look like they come from a third-world country—an outdated look and poorly qualified office staff, and the whole situation needs a kick up the nether regions because the basics are all wrong.
Since the COVID pandemic, most people haven’t seen their GP in years. Every time they go, they see a different doctor because their doctor is off sick or on leave.
Getting an appointment with your GP is like winning the lottery.
British people have been paying into a system that once worked but no longer works, but if we moan about it, our government will just privatise it, but will that be covered by the millions we have paid in national insurance over the years? It’s a bit like our pensions that most of us will never see because all our money was stolen from us by greedy politicians!
I’m not racist, I’m really not, but charity begins at home in the UK, and illegals should be sent back home because once they’re on UK soil, this becomes their home.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 