When The Healthcare System Fails Lives Are Lost

My Mom

The following is an account of an elderly lady in the UK who went into a residential care home for a few weeks whilst the council house (social housing) she lived in was updated to better suit her needs as a disabled individual.

The fact that it happened in the UK does not mean it cannot happen wherever you are…it does happen, all over the world where low paid, badly trained, disinterested ‘care’ workers are employed to take care of our vulnerable people.

You can replace the word senior, with disabled, autistic, retarded, handicapped, anything you like. Across the globe vulnerable people are being sold short by incompetence and even worse, by lack of interest on the part of those looking after them.

I know this case intimately, Norma Spear was my Mother. I had taken care of her for a long time, but she had a fall, went into hospital and it was decided that it would be better for her to go into a residential home for a few weeks whilst her home was upgraded to suit her needs.

Oh how I have regretted that decision.

I nagged, cajoled and even outright screamed at the care staff to get help, to call a doctor, they lied repeatedly, said they had, said anti-biotics had been prescribed. Oh the drugs had, but the prescription was lying on the desk for days before someone finally decided to collect them.

For six days, at a formal court inquest I sat, with my eldest daughter, listening to lies, listening to learned council trying to shift the blame. When I gave my evidence they called me every type of liar without actually using the word liar.

But the truth came out, and I thank God for that.

What follows is part of the newspaper report of what happened at the inquest and how my mother came to die. Read it, digest it, think about it, watch for the signs that could tell you something is wrong with the care your loved one is getting.

Its too late for my mom, but there still might be time for your mother, or father, uncle, aunt, gran or any other relative who is receiving state care.

Birmingham care home left gran to die of thirst

Gross neglect by staff at a Birmingham care home led to a gran dying of dehydration, a coroner ruled in a damning inquest verdict.

Norma Spear, 71, died in Moseley Hall Hospital on November 6, 2010, three days after she was admitted from Druids Meadow residential home in Highter’s Heath.

Mrs Spear, from Harborne, developed a urinary tract infection in her five weeks at the home which stunted her appetite and led her to become dangerously dehydrated, the inquest heard.

Her daughter said her mum’s stay at the home, during which she lost 35lbs to weigh just over five stones, was only supposed to be temporary and that she was due to return to her house in Harborne once a new fire had been fitted.

Birmingham’s deputy coroner Sarah Ormond-Walshe identified 11 failures – five of them severe enough to merit gross neglect – by staff at the home to act on serious concerns about her health.

In reaching a verdict, following a six-day inquest at Sutton Coldfield Town Hall, Mrs Ormond-Walshe said Ms Spear had “died of natural causes to which neglect contributed”.

She added:

“The failures I found are gross because they were so terribly simple.Without one or more of these gross failures, Norma Spear would have survived. She was at risk of the very thing she died of and that risk had been told to staff by a social worker. It should have been obvious she was not drinking sufficiently for at least the last two weeks. It does not require medical training.”

Most of the errors cataloged centered around the staff’s failure to call a doctor, despite repeated requests from her daughter, and to properly investigate Mrs Spear’s worrying weight loss.

Mrs Ormond-Walshe also highlighted four criticisms against some of the GPs attached to Druids Meadow, including failures to establish Ms Spear’s medical history and to properly diagnose her dehydration.

Speaking after the verdict, her daughter said:

“It’s a bittersweet feeling really. We’ve got the decision that she would have lived longer and had that confirmed by medical experts. We feel vindicated but it’s an empty win.”

Norma’s granddaughter Becci, wept as the list of failures were read out in court.

The 32-year-old mum said:

“She did nothing but care for other people and she died because she was not properly cared for by other people. I’m disgusted with them and hope it affects them for the rest of their lives.”

Birmingham City Council’s legal advisor, Edward Pepperall QC, said the coroner should feel comforted the home closed in 2011 and that the authority had replaced a large number of its care homes with four care centers. He said an internal review of how paperwork was updated and stored had taken place and that the Care Quality Commission had carried out subsequent inspections.

Those in charge of the home could still face disciplinary proceedings, he said.

The inquest had been told how Mrs Spear was taken to Moseley Hall on June 3, 2010, after suffering a fall at home.

She fully recovered from her injuries and despite needing encouragement to eat and drink, her weight was stabilized at around eight stone.

But her weight dropped and her health quickly deteriorated after she moved from the hospital into Druids Meadow on September 28. Her daughter, Mrs Bennett who now lives in Hampshire, told the court how she had repeatedly asked staff to arrange for a doctor to see her mum amid fears she was dangerously dehydrated and was losing weight.

Despite her concerns, exacerbated by Mrs Spear’s medical history, staff at the home did not arrange for a doctor to see Mrs Spear until November 1. She died five days later.