A retired nurse died after hospital staff mixed her up with a patient on a 'Do Not Resuscitate' notice. Pat Dawson, 73, was fit and healthy and had had no medical treatment in 30 years before suffering a suspected bowel obstruction, her family told an inquest. The widow and grandmother was taken to Royal Blackburn Hospital by ambulance but died after she collapsed and staff stopped attempts to resuscitate her following a look at 'her' notes.
And 'her' is in inverted comments there because the person to whom the DNR was relevant was a man.
By the time medics realised that a mix-up had left them reading a DNR report relating to a 90-year-old man, it was too late to save her. The inquest heard that staff failed to check the NHS number on Mrs Dawson's wristband or even the gender and age on the notes.
The NHS - the place where you can ignore all safeguards and get away with it by pleading 'overwork'.
Emergency consultant Ahmad Alabood called the tragedy an 'honest mistake because [staff] were rushing' when the unit was 'over-stretched and over-crowded'.
Oh, they were rushing? Well, forget the fact someone's dead, eh?
The inquest also heard details from an internal report by the hospital trust, which warned: 'Given the relentless pressure on A&E departments, the investigation is concerned that a similar event could occur in the future.'
Utterly shameless. And why shouldn't they be? In any other industry, say, building or engineering, someone would be going to prison or facing a huge fine at the very least. In the NHS, however...
Mrs Dawson's son, John, told the inquest in Accrington: 'I know that our mum would have been horrified by how the system she gave her life to failed her.
'It is beyond belief the catastrophic way in which she was failed, not only by one individual but by doctors who have sworn the Hippocratic oath to do no harm, and our mum paid the ultimate price.'
Unfortunately, it's not 'beyond belief' at all, and it'll continue not to be until NHS staff face proper consequences.