Last year on a Bank holiday Monday my husband had a swollen leg and knee the size of a football. He was given morphine by the ambulance crew in order to transport him to A & E where he was left in the corridor outside A &E on his own. I arrived one hour later. Some time later he was seen by a doctor. Following an x ray the doctor said there was no break, put a full leg brace on the leg, gave him a walking frame, told my husband to put ice on the leg and sent him home.
Once the morphine had worn off my husband was in agony. At home later that week and following a GP a visit he was taken by ambulance to the Dalriada hospital for intensive physio!
By the following Monday he had a UTI and was disorientated, an ambulance crew transported him to the Causeway A &E. The Causeway A&E felt like a war zone and my 6 foot 2 husband was left on a stretcher bed in a corridor for four days. Staff were so busy I had to toilet my husband using a commode and a flimsy screen and wipes from my handbag. On entry to A &E my husband was seen by a registrar who asked me about the leg and I watched as they wrote the details down.
On the Friday, five days after his admission, my husband was delirious and suffering from sepsis. A doctor appeared and said they had read my husband’s notes but could not find the cause of the infection. The doctor spoke of a possible problem with a kidney but said this was not related to the infection. I asked the doctor, ‘but what about his knee and his leg ! ‘ the doctor replied ‘his leg?’ and then pulled back the bed sheet, looked at the knee and rushed off, appearing minutes later with the same registrar, that I had spoken to about my husband’s leg five days previously, and told the registrar they wanted a C T scan of the leg done immediately. The CT scan showed a fracture to his femur close to the knee joint. For all of this time my husband had been mobilised for toileting in A& E.
He was immediately transferred to Medical 1, suffering from sepsis and Delirium caused by the undetected fractured femur. He remained in Medical 1 and was given a cocktail of antibiotics for a sustained period until his bed, which had a heart monitor, was required by another patient , he was then transferred to a separate side wing, still suffering from delirium and sepsis. His delirium was so bad at one point that he needed to be sedated. One Sunday morning I was notified by a nurse that a nurse wrongly administered a further dose of sedative on the night shift, I lodged a formal complaint against the nurse. It was only after this very upsetting incident that the ward doctor and psychiatric doctor were prepared to come and listen to my son and myself.
My husband was in hospital for over ten weeks and the delirium gradually subsided once the psychotic drugs were stopped, at our request!
Some of the nursing staff and some of the auxiliary staff were very good with my husband . I cannot say the same about the doctors.
My daughter in law is a G P and at one point a ward doctor asked me if she was here in N I or England!! Why?
Throughout my husband’s time in hospital I kept meticulous records of all medical staff names and what was done to and for him and what was said.
Ironically, when the ambulance staff first took my husband to A & E one of them said the knee needed a CT scan done to find the problem. Sadly that didn’t happen, if the doctor had initially requested a CT scan the fracture would have been detected.
"Failure to detect a fractured femur"
About: Causeway Hospital / Accident & Emergency Causeway Hospital Accident & Emergency BT52 1HS Causeway Hospital / Medical 2 Causeway Hospital Medical 2 BT52 1HS Dalriada Hospital / Physiotherapy Recovery Service Dalriada Hospital Physiotherapy Recovery Service Ballycastle BT54 6BA Northern Ireland Ambulance Service / Emergency ambulance response Northern Ireland Ambulance Service Emergency ambulance response Belfast BT8 8SG
Posted by MTA (as ),
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Update posted by MTA (a carer) last week
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