@Burgled - agreed!
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I totally agree with what you are saying, I am worried that they will close ranks,it wont be the first time. The ombudsman only take on main concerns, there were a catalogue of errors as well. One of the worst things I experienced was hours after my Husband passed we were sitting in the cubicle and a nurse shouted through the curtains Frank can I do your obs , I havenât seen you for hours. I said this was because he had passed. When I complained about this I was given some paperwork to say I had been mistaken and it was a dr to register his passing. Not only had the nurse in question apologised to me and 3 family members, I actually sat in whilst the dr registered his passing.
If a trust can be as dishonest to put this onto paperwork, I honestly fear what is coming .I suppose nothing will ever be worse than losing my Husband, but I will feel I have let him down if they come back with a whitewash.
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@Ivy1 yes I know how you feel, nothing can change what has happened but youâre doing it for your husband. I agree one of my first thoughts was that they are almost certainly going to deny any wrong doing. In fact, right from the start I had the distinct feeling that when they told me he had passed away it felt like they were sort of saying - but it had nothing to do with us, nobody could have survived what happened but of course the real point is that he was in their care for 6 hours and nothing was actually done for him. I could scream!
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Same for us, we watched day turn to night and still nobody came well thats not strictly true a nurse came in apologised that he wasnt her patient then came back an hour later apologised again and said he was her patient after all.
When we were admitted our gp had said his oxygen levels were low and he needed oxygen therapy, my Husband didnt want to go in as his Father had received very poor care there. The gp said he would probably be sent home , the dr at our face to face meeting said that they had given him an 85% chance of passing, unfortunately they never told me,therefore his family didnt say goodbye .The gp who referred him was absolutely shocked he had passed , it is very hard to take xone
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Sorry very hard to take, one of my Husband wishes was to pass on at home if and when his time came . X
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@Ivy1 your hospital sounds worse than one my poor husband ended up in and thatâs saying somethingâŚyouâve really been through it havenât you xx
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I think we all have sadly 
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@Coriander thank you so much for your lovely kind message. Iâm sorry that you also had to do CPR on your husband also. It is so hard as when you watch it on television they seem to come back very quickly but the reality is only 10% of people come back. I had to relive my nightmare last week due to a first aid course for my work and had to do CPR which was a massive trigger. 14 months for me now which I am finding the second year harder as the first year I was in shock and numb. Again I am sorry for the loss of your husband and I hope that you are having a lot of support. Take care and big hugs Xx
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I feel your pain, i have put in an official complaint to the hospital where my friend died. 7 weeks after admission the urgent test she needed was onky just done way too late to save her life. There are charities out there that can help do this. If you need i can give you detail of the charity i used. It wont bring her back but her care over those weeks was lacking and we watched her get weaker and weaker. So many what ifs and you end up blaming yourself for not making the hospital do the right thing! So sorry for your loss
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I am truly sorry for your loss - I know itâs unreal and heartbreaking.
It happened to me - very long story but NHS didnât spot the aneurysm on my husbands CT scan & treated him for something else. Upshot is he died unexpectedly in an A& E department .
I tell you this as I have been through the mill to get answers. Please prepare yourself for a long & tough journey to get any answers - especially if they were at fault or made a bad decision.
Get your husbands medical notes, records, scans and anything else and get them independently assessed. Ask your assessor what areas you should raise questions about his treatment.
Go though PALS - mine were useless but you have to go through the process . In Wales itâs called PTR - putting things right. For me - I just wanted to sit with my husbands consultant & review his post mortem to find out what happened. It took from April to December to get a formal written response. Luckily Iâd had external input so I knew the response was not correct. The following March I submitted it to the ombudsman . Another 7 months but they supported my claims and found in my favour - the hospital had made errors and my husband died because of them. An âinjusticeâ . So beginning to end - 20months - for what I thought should be a simple review. . Itâs a very tough journey but I feel a satisfaction that they cannot hide behind system & process. I started just wanting answers - the fact they treated me like an idiot, called my husband by a Datix system number in all correspondence and tried to hide the circumstances that led to his death has now made me lodge papers with my solicitor.
Overall - has seeking answers helped me move on with my grief? No. Itâs been all consuming . None of my friends thought it was a good idea to pursue it. But Iâm a stubborn cuss that canât let it go. I had to get to the truth otherwise I would always have wondered. So I guess - itâs up to you how far you pursue it. Everytime I had to respond I got angry & exhausted, so maybe it wasnât healthy. But I knew I just had to see it through. Listen to your inner voices - youâll know whatâs right for you.
If you want any advice or support, just ask .
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4 years on and finally will be getting answers on 16th March, it has been a horrendous journey, that has literally broken me.I can see why people give up, we are literally punished for looking for the truth.
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@Nadiaendih It just blows my mind that they are always trying to cover things up. As a family we have been here before my Granddaughter who is Type 1 diabetic went into kidney failure at age 7 lots of trips to the doctors and A&e this was missed and we nearly ended up losing her she ended up on kidney dialysis and went on to have a kidney transplant at the age of 9. We sued them and won and in all honesty we by-passed PALs completely and went straight to a solicitor we had to employ a Barrister aswell but it was worth it. That experience taught us a lot. Thanks for sharing your story I feel the same I just want to get to the truth for my husband I know it wonât bring him back and it may be more painful than just accepting what happened but like you, I canât/wonât let it go x
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I had an investigation done after my partner died in hospital. It took a year to get it done and it came back that there were failures in his care. He went in with a chest infection and caught coronavirus. He was then ready to be discharged and he caught norovirus. They then found out he had sepsis but it was too late and he had died. There were failures in his care and failures in communication. I only had half an hour to say goodbye to him. They apologised for the mistakes but itâs too late because apologies arenât going to bring him back to me. I have to live without him and thatâs the hardest thing to do
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Thatâs terrible 
Sepsis is so dangerous. I used to share an office with a head nurse whose job it was to educate staff on spotting the signs. She was really passionate about her job, and she didnât care who she offended: she was there to save as many lives as possible through education 
.
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I know it doesnt bring them back but does it give any relief if they admit their failures? I am hoping they will put measures in place to help others in the future
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If you visit AVMAâs website they might be able to advise whether a medical negligence case might be possible.
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We have already put in an official complaint through a charity. I didnt wabt to go dowb the litigation route as it didnt feel like it woukd change anything
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Hi I just want honesty and accountability something that was missing at the time of his very poor treatment. I feel the consultants in question have walked away from a basic duty of care
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Yes this is how i feel. My friend who was only 69, walked into the hospital chatting and coherent. Was put into an elderly care ward where most of the other patients had dementia and got left there for 7 weeks whilst consultants argued which of them would take responsibility for her treatment. Whilst she got slowly weaker and weaker waiting 6 weeks for an urgent biopsy. Becoming less and less coherent. Finally sucumbing to flu so we couldnt visit for the last week. Biopsy when finally done showed lymphoma which would have been treatable, had trearnent started sooner, the consultant spoke about end of life as if she had dementia.
I just wanted to get her home for her to end her days in a nicer place. Maybe in a hospice so she had the opportunity to change her will and tidy things up which she had wanted to do.
I want the hospital to say we should have done more and we should have done it sooner
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I just read about the very poor service that your friend received, it is truly heartbreaking, everyone is an individual and should be treated as such.
I am not sure my Husband could have been saved, but the lack of treatment made months of his life unbearable for him, he literally had coughing and choking episodes that took hours to get over.
All the times we were being told he was improving by both primary and secondary care.
When our hf consultant asked what our respiratory specialist thought about the asbestosis (this had been mentioned 6 months before in passing, we were told he didnt need to be referred on), we said he hasnât seen a respiratory specialist, he asked us why?.
After this appointment my Husband said if anything happened to him, would I chase it.I said I would and so far it has taken 4 years. The thought that my Husband passed away in a hospital bed would have appalled him, the hospital said they knew he was going to go,this despite telling me âhopefully he will be home in a couple of daysâ. Consequently none of his family got to say goodbye, I didnt either despite being there. My lasting memories of my Husband was when he was finally given oxygen and he said "thatâs lovely ",I am sure it was after months of coughing and choking. For me I am not sure how this will end, though I am not expecting honesty, the trust has been as dishonest and obstructive as they could be. If the consultants involved with my Husbands poor care had been honest and answered the questions I have asked, all of this would have stopped. Instead I am struggling to get past seeing him so distressed in the very place that should have helped him .Love and light to you.
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