Family attacks transfer after death of frail patient

A FRAIL grandmother was moved to a discharge lounge at the Royal Oldham Hospital in the middle of the night because of a bed shortage.

Jean Garside was discharged to a nursing home later that day, but was back in hospital 24 hours later when her condition deteriorated. She died three weeks later.

Mrs Garside’s family yesterday questioned the wisdom of moving a 77-year-old woman who needed round-the-clock care to what they said was “basically a lounge.”

Speaking at an inquest into her death, one of her four children, Susan Dunn, said: “Our mother must have been so poorly to have been taken back into hospital so quickly in the state she was in.

“She had acute kidney failure and was in a diabetic coma, does that happen overnight?” she asked Dr Samuel Solomon, a consultant physician who cared for her mother at the hospital.

The family were also concerned they had not been told of the number of illnesses affecting Mrs Garside, who had dementia, and lived with her husband, Arnold, in Huddersfield Road, Lees.

Her condition leading up to her death was given by Dr Solomon, and included pneumonia and septicaemia, which Mrs Dunn said came as a surprise.

“If we had known how ill she really was, would our decision to move her to a nursing home have been put on hold? I would have said she should never have been moved from the hospital,” she said.

Dr Solomon told the family the pneumonia had cleared up before she was discharged.

Expressing his condolences, he added: “We did the best to look after your mother,” but admitted: “She was transferred to the discharge lounge in the middle of the night because of pressure on acute beds.

“The Royal Oldham Hospital from time to time has problems finding beds for acutely ill medical patients, so patients are transferred in the middle of the night, especially if they are being discharged the following day.”

Mrs Garside was treated with various antibiotics for a urinary tract infection and other conditions which she later developed. A post-mortem examination found she died from clostridium difficile colitis, with end-stage dementia as a contributory factor.

Dr Solomon said clostridium difficile was a condition associated with the use of antibiotics, but he had had no choice other than to prescribe them to treat the infections she developed. He said: “Any of the antibiotics on their own are unlikely to cause clostridium difficile, but the problem was with the number of antibiotics used and their sequence.”

Coroner Simon Nelson recorded a verdict of death as a “result of a recognised consequence of necessary therapeutic intervention against a background of general frailty of health”.

He did not perceive the deterioration in Mrs Garside’s condition was because of her transfer to the discharge lounge, her discharge from hospital and readmission, and said she was on a “downward spiral”.

He said the matter of Mrs Garside’s transfer to the discharge lounge in the middle of the night was between the family and the hospital, adding: “If I felt it had a bearing on her death I would pursue it.”