Hospital Negligence

Public Archive
1

Hi All,

i’ve only just started using the forums, which i am kicking myself for as it’s a valuable support network i could have done with. I was DX this time last year, several sites of DCIS and due for MX and immediate recon using a tissue expander. as i was having recon i was under plastic surgeon, and ended up having mx on a plastics ward quite far from where i live. i think this was root of the problem.

unfortunately the nurse looking after me after MX failed to respond to me being in agony, bp dropping and temp rising. i had a huge hematoma and went through the whole night terrified, in excruciating pain and unable to even get off the bed, i was in a single room and very scared.

the nurse did not look at my operation site atall, nor check my drains, even when i held one up and asked if this was right ? (they were both so full). when my surgeon came in at 8.30am he immediately asked if i had padding under my gown. i was by this point totally delirious, and was rushed to theatre, had a seizure on the trolley, and 8 hr op.

my recovery was very hard, i was very ill indeed. i am planning on taking this thro a complaints procedure (having already got my notes thro data protection act). when i was told 3 weeks later they found invasive tumor aswell and i had to go back in for lymph node removal i nearly collapsed. luckily i was on a breast care ward, and only then did i realise just how awful the first experience had been. the breast care ward was an entirely different experience, thankfully.

i’m very sad, every time i meet someone or read something where people are talking about their ‘wonderful care’. if i had only known what i know now i would have demanded to see a Dr. i still don’t know why i didn’t.

i still haven’t been able to write the letter of complaint, despite having the notes for about 2 months now. apparently legally i do not have a case.

please, please, if you feel you are not receiving the right care, or are struggling with what is going on, demand to see someone senior. i wish i had. also wish i had used this site earlier and gained some information before the op, that way i might have been more sure that something wasn’t right.

Erika xx

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Erika,you say legally you don’t have a legal case.Its important to decide what you want from any complaint. Compensation or a change in procedure?
Personally I would want a change in procedure,so that others do not have to suffer in the way that you did.I think that would feel more satisfactory and help you move on.I had a couple of hiccups in mt treatment ,one I complained about (I was not alone!)and the other I didn’t.The second problem still lingers and I have decided to address it at my next appt.
Start writing a rough draft and see how it goes.
Love n hugs
xxx

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erika if you think the nurse was to blame and you know who she was you can make a complaint through our professional body the nursing and midwifery council… if this nurse isnt doing her job properly and not checking a wound or drains post operatively certainly doesnt sound like best practice… it has nothing to do with being legal… nurses have a duty of care.

sorry you had such a poor experience on the plastics ward.

this is the nmc website
nmc-uk.org/General-public/

Lulu x

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Dear Erika

I too am very sorry to hear of your experience. Lulu is very right. This nurse had a “duty of care” and seemingly failed in that duty of care. Like Lulu I too am a Registered Nurse and Midwife and I have to say that this nursed failed to undertake fundamental and vital post operative checks. Such checks ( wound site and surgical drains) are necessary after all surgical procedures to detect signs of haemorrhage. Very often post op haemorrhage is internal, hence the need to frequently observe the surgical site and blood loss via the drains.

Post op Haemorrhage is a complication and risk involved with any surgery. However, had this nurse undertaken the required checks, then it is possible that the haemmorhage would have been detected much sooner and you might not have had to endure the level of pain that you did through the night.

Throughout my own breast cancer treatment I experienced some excellent care and also some very disappointing and not so good care. On each occasion I have written to the hospital to either express my thanks or to raise issues and concerns about poor practice and bad attitude.

I totally understand how upset and angry you must feel about your experience. I also appreciate that a breast cancer diagnosis and all it’s treatment is a frightening and stressful experience. When I became a patient myself I finally experienced that sense of vulnerability and loss of control that is so often spoken of in nursing lectures and textbooks.

I urge you to follow through with your complaint - at a time when you feel more able to tackle it. I too felt beaten and defeated after a particularly bad experience in a specialist cancer hospital (you’d really think that being a center of excellence and cancer specialists they’d treat people with compassion and sensitivity). Sadly my experience was that no one really seemed to care that much - I was just another cancer patient to them it seemed.

Look at the website that Lulu posted
Also take a look at the PALs website.

pals.nhs.uk/

They deal with complaints and should be able to guide you through the process.

Love to you I hope you are well

Monkey Girl xxx

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It certainly is very bad practice for the nurse not to check drains and wound sites. I qualified as a nurse 25yrs or so ago and as a student nurse on the wards, it was part of the job. It makes me wonder what sort of training nurses have these days.

When I had my nodes out, there were 4 of us breast patients put on an orthopaedic ward as the breast one was full. One of them underwent a mastectomy and developed a haematoma overnight and was in a lot of pain. In the morning, she was seen by the surgeon who was very angry that it hadn’t been dealt with properly during the night - the patient had to go back to surgery to have the haematoma removed. The rest of us felt that if she’d been on the breast ward, this wouldn’t have happened as the nurses there would have been more aware of post op problems of a mastectomy. Sounds a bit like your experience, doesn’t it Erika?

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I do so agree with monkeygirl and steph - and I qualified as a nurse in 1964 (just been to a 50 year re-union!)
I was quite shocked when I had my first admission to hospital for breast surgery (never been a patient before except when I had my children) - just couldn’t believe how things had changed. On reflection I realised that a lot of the changes were administrative & superficial and there were still a lot of ‘real’ nurses - just that there are now so many different grades and the shifts patterns are confusing so that you never get to know anyone or feel you have a named person responsible for you.

I decided to write to the “matron” after my discharge and found her most receptive. I didn’t make a complaint as such but said I had kept a diary of how it had felt to be a patient; she was genuinely interested & met up with me to talk about it. It ended with her asking permission to use my experiences in her teaching practice - and I felt that I had actually achieved something.

When I had chemotherapy (at a different hospital) I felt the nursing care there was seriously sub-standard - with a few honourable exceptions, I found the chemotherapy nurses to be technically competent but very short in the TLC department. This time I just got platitudes from the ‘Matron’ and advice on how to forward a formal complaint- which I wasn’t interested in doing - just wanting something to be done about the lack of empathy, lack of privacy- being made to feel like a ‘number’ etc etc. In the end I did write to the CEO and got a wordy reply- but really don’t think much has changed in the dept. and on the oncology ward- judging by the comments I have heard from others since.
Last month I had a brief in-patient stay in an orthopaedic ward (at a 3rd hospital) and had nothing but praise for the nursing care- I really think so much is still down to the sister or whoever is in charge and that’s what determines the ethos and standards of that ward or department.

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Dear Erika

I can sympathise with your situation. I too had terrible care. I could have been diagnosed with early breast cancer instead I was diagnosed with a stage 3b breast cancer because my GPs refused to send me for further investigation when I requested. I’ve had great help from many other misdiagnosed ladies on this site - JaneRA, Teacup, Anna45 to name a few.

Monkey Girl has given you some very solid advice. I also urge you to follow through with your complaint at a time when you feel more able to tackle it. You have plenty of time. I used to write all my thoughts down on paper and keep them in a file for later. This may help you if you feel you are allowing it to fester - believe me I did. You can even draft a standard letter to all the organisations you wish to tell about your experience if you think that would help you. You can also pick that up at a later date.

I didn’t want to take my case to law. It was more important for me to get the system changed whereby no other person suffered the way I did. I have achieved a little here but not nearly enough. However, my GPs have denied everything and unless it is written down on paper you have no evidence. I feel I have no other option open to me that to go to law. This is not about compensation - it’s about justice and making sure it doesn’t happen again. Interestingly, the word “compensation” makes me laugh because even if I were to be compensated it would more than likely be less that the £20,000 I’ve already spent on my case.

You are No. 1 and you must look after yourself.

Jeannie

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I recently completed a survey dealing with the care I received at mastectomy stage ( very poor althoough not as bad as some recorded on this thread ) and chemo stage. During the latter the standard of nursing care was poor. There were of course exceptions but on the whole I thought the nurses were lazy abrupt and careless. They didn’t seem to care about me or how I was feeling. On my last chemo 12 of us were booked in for 9am and only one nurse could be found. There were 3 sisters who chose to sit in their offic drinking coffee rather than come and help clear the backlog. When I asked the nurse dealing with me if that was normal she said it was ! Of all the professions involved in my care throughout this horrible nightmare the nurses were the weakest link. when I needed an echo cardiogram one lazy and very scruffy sister refused to direct me to the right place simply saying she didn’t have a clue and walked off.

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Unbelievable ado! Makes me ashamed to say I’m a nurse!

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I am so sorry to hear what you went through. I am actually very surprised you don’t have a legal case as this strikes me as classic negligence on the part of the nurse. As others have said she should have checked the wound site, the contents of the drains and been alerted by your symptoms of pain, dropping BP and rising temp. She should have called a doctor as well. Who told you there was no case and why?

I have to say when I was in hospital I was moved to an orthopaedic ward and the care was appalling. The qualified nurse on nights was completely unable to read how much had gone into the drain. She scribbled something messily and inaccurate on the chart. The consultant looked at it and couldn’t understand what on earth she’d charted. Luckily I’d written down my own readings (I also used to be a nurse) and was able to tell him what they should have been. ‘Always ask the patient’ he told his posse of junior doctors.

The same dreadful nurse was also adamant about taking my blood pressure even though I was several days post op, feeling fine and she was struggling to do it. I’d had lymph nodes removed under one arm and blood clot in the other. I said no way and that it had been done on my leg. She tried several times and caused me so much pain that I told her to stop and that she could note in the records if she wanted that I had refused and that I felt fine.

The very worse type of nurse is one who won’t admit to things they can’t do or don’t know what is wrong and fail to get help. There would have a been a night sister at the hospital so in your case she called have contacted her (she would probably have visited the ward at some point anyway). A doctor may not have been thrilled at being called in the night but would have been glad that he/she had once they’d seen what was happening to you.

If you’re finding writing a letter hard how about going to the PALs office at the hospital and talking it through with them. They can look into whether the problem was totally with this one nurse or was there something about the team that wasn’t supportive too.

Alternatively you may need to decide that you have to move on from the whole experience and vent your frustration here or to the helpline.

take care
elinda x

11

I wrote to Pals about some problems I experienced in May. On my 2 pre-op assessments they didn’t pick up on the fact that I have an irregular pulse (despite me telling them about it). The anaesthetist was very concerned when he saw it- I was rushed up to see a cardiologist who said I could have a cardiac arrest on the operating table! My surgery was delayed by 2 weeks while they did further tests on my heart. I have still not had a reply from Pals, they rang me 2 weeks ago to ask if they could close the case and I said no. Still not had anything from them despite chasing it up last week. I don’t think some hospitals are interested in feedback. I have had such mixed care- some really good and some very poor. The attitude of some of the staff is very poor. When I was on the post op ward they religiously took my BP and temperature on every shift but never bothered writing it down as no one put the form in my records!

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I’d definitely contact them again but this time in writing and you could copy in the director of nursing and chief executive. State what you want from them. For example, you might want to know what protocol has been put in place to ensure that information given by a patient such as this is given to the appropriate person and not ignored. Apart from the significant health risks posed to patients there is also the issue of cancelling operations - so not good for patients or the hospital.

Unfortunately, there are some (hopefully a minority) of health care assistants and nurses who go through the motions of taking pulses etc treating that action or the recording of it as the end product. This can lead to a blase attitude about any abnormalities.

I would add in your letter that you have not been impressed by the way your complaint has been handled and detail that too.
Hope you get somewhere with it!
bw, Elinda x