Health Service Commissioner : first report for session 1978-79 : investigations completed August to November 1978.

  • Great Britain. Health Service Commissioner
Date:
1978
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Health Service Commissioner : first report for session 1978-79 : investigations completed August to November 1978. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    20. The complainant said that when she visited the hospital on 5 April her mother was delirious and seemed agitated. While she and her sister-in- law were sitting at the bedside a nurse came into the room and impatiently stuck a paper tissue in the patient’s hand saying that she had been pointing at the wall all day and that this might stop her. The sister-in-law gave me a similar description of the incident. 21. A pupil nurse who fitted the description given by the complainant and her sister-in-law and who was on duty on the ward that day remembered that the patient had been very confused and had mistaken the nurse for her sister several times. The nurse denied knowledge of such an incident however, nor did any of the other nurses seen by my officer remember anything about it. 22. The patient had also told her daughter of an incident which occurred during a doctor’s round. She had complained to the consultant that she could not eat the hospital food and she said the consultant had told her to get her daughter to bring food in. The consultant could remember no such incident when questioned by my officer but said that he could not imagine being rude to the patient. The house officer, however, remembered the incident as an attempt by the consultant to cheer up the patient. The suggestion that the complainant should bring food in to her mother was not meant in an offensive manner but was made so that the patient should feel free to have something tasty if she so wished. Findings 23. Because of the lack of corroborative evidence, I have been unable to come to any firm conclusion about whether there was a lack of care and attention on the part of any of the nurses. But the complainant and her sister-in-law were obviously upset by an incident on 5 April involving a member of the nursing staff, and I am inclined to believe that an injudicious remark was passed on that occasion. Patients in a state of anxiety can be ultra-sensitive to remarks made to them and I think it likely that the complainant’s mother misunderstood the consultant’s intention in making the remark about the food. The complaint that the complainant wrote to the consultant two weeks after her mother’s death but received no reply, and that she was dissatisfied with the way in which the Authority dealt with her complaint 24. On 22 April the complainant wrote to the consultant expressing her dissatisfaction with the way her mother had been treated in hospital, but she received no reply. The consultant told my officer that he did not think it necessary to reply to the letter as he considered the complainant had simply wanted to express her dissatisfaction to him. 25. The complainant wrote to the health district on 1 September 1976, and the general administrator (‘the administrator’) replied on 1 November. She wrote again on 6 December expressing dissatisfaction at some of the answers to her complaint, which she felt were mostly based on assumption