Personal Injury
Clinical Negligence
Disputes

The (Claimant) son and executor of a doctor, who was 61 years of age at the time of his death, had called for an Ambulance at approximately 20.00 on the 8th April 2005. His initial complaint was shortness of breath and difficulty in breathing, a dry cough and elevated temperature.

The Ambulance arrived with 15 minutes and the Ambulance Driver said they had to take him to George Elliot Hospital. The father expressed his concern that he would rather be taken to Heartlands NHS Trust, as he perceived the quality of care at George Elliot to be inferior to that at Heartlands.

Whilst in the care of the Defendant, the father eventually passed away three days later. The Defendants were aware of the potentially critical condition of the father.

He was reviewed by the ITU Outreach team with a view to be Intubated / Ventilated , moved to ICU. This was not done, as it appeared primarily due to a lack of beds. The Trusts own guidelines stated that where the Score is above 3 , then the patient should be observed “Hourly”. This was written in bold on the bottom of this document and is a Trust document, which presumably were the guidelines to patient management that the Trust should follow.

Given that the Trust believed the father’s condition was poor and potentially getting worse, and taking the above, that the observations should be completed hourly, then why after a certain point was the frequency of observations changed from 1 hourly to every 2 to 3 hours, was a burning question for the family.

Some Observations were both “Unsigned” and incomplete. The Claimants position was that certain Observations at a certain point were never completed and had been entered after the event to make the records complete. The Claimant did not believe there was any reasonable reason why someone would forget to sign the entries on four separate occasions.

The Claimant has suggested to the Defendants, if it was the practice of the nursing staff not to sign notes, then there would be other patient notes which were unsigned and could be in theory presented as example of other unsigned notes to give at least some credence to the argument that the nurse simply “forgot”, which is the only explanation that was provided.

Furthermore, the Defendant had at all times refused to acknowledge the identity of the nursing staff in question, which was contrary to any NHS Policy Directive on patients freedom to know the identity of their carer/ professional staff.

Furthermore, at a Hearing on the 15th of January 2009, at Birmingham County Court, Solicitors for Defendant, suggested that “they had identified the Nurse responsible by examining the signatures” as to the identity of the Nurse in question. When there were no signatures, how can the identity have been confirmed on this basis?

Just before passing the wife of the Deceased, telephoned the hospital to check that the father was ok. The Defendant initially stated that this telephone call had never been received but later suggested it was in fact correct that the telephone call had been received. It is the claimant’s position that this phone call between 3.30 and 4.00 prompted the nursing staff to go and observe the patient, at which point the matter was escalated and the patient moved to A&E. 

The Claimant believed that the Medical Records had been altered post the death to appear to be complete. Therefore, if the notes had been completed post the event, then they should have been marked / signed as being written in retrospect. 

The Claimant believed that if the Trust in its own interests had changed or altered the records, the whole of the records were unreliable evidence by virtue of being tampered with and therefore could not be relied upon as safe evidence on which to have expert evidence prepared if the matter continued to trial. In excess of £50,000 was being claimed, the mediation took five hours, was in person and settled.