Falls at Forth Valley Royal Hospital.

CARE OPINION REPORTS
First hand accounts
From Patients and Families

 

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Care Opinion reports feature first person accounts of claimed failures in falls care and care for the elderly at Forth Valley Royal Hospital

 

Posted June 25, 2022

 

Care Opinion is a website that allows people across the UK to post their experiences of hospitals and other health care settings.

Patients, relatives and friends are free to post. The vast majority of posts and reports - including about Forth Valley Royal Hospital - are positive, thankful and appreciative of the care people have received and the services provided.

Among the reports for Forth Valley Royal Hospital is a small number that are highly critical of falls prevention care and care for the elderly.

Their significance is that they describe grave failures - the kind of which just should not take place in any hospital. If, on regrettable occasions, such failures do occur then health boards should work quickly to remedy them. Sadly, the repeated rulings by the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman show that failures have occured throughout the life of Forth Valley Royal Hospital - despite repeated recommendations for nurses to be adequately trained and for NHS Forth Valley to demonstrate that improvements have been made following each Ombudsman report.

 

The reports that follow below are by real people, albeit anonymised, telling stories about what they see as avoidable and unnecessary failures of nursing care that have put patients at risk and, in some cases, been followed by serious life-changing injury.

Dates are the dates of the submission of the report to the Care Opinion website.

 

October 18, 2017

This report describes how the author’s mother – a previously independent elderly woman - deteriorated after an “entirely preventable fall”.

The report states:

“Earlier this year, in the space of 24 hours in this hospital my mother, a frail and elderly woman with a treatable urine infection who was still happily living independently in her own home, was transformed as a result of what we think was an entirely preventable fall in hospital (AAU), into a bed-ridden woman unable to do anything for herself.

"She was robbed of her independence, dignity, and any hope of a decent end to her life.

“My mother was also in A&E, Wards A21 and B21 during this time.”

Link to report: https://www.careopinion.org.uk/403190

April 9, 2018

Under the heading “poor care of our mother”, her son writes that she suffered widespread substandard care that he claims had devastating consequences on her health and left her with broken bones after a “serious incident”.

He tells of “ongoing issues”

• He describes a “substantial complaint to Forth Valley”

• He speaks of a “serious incident” which left her with “two bone fractures”

Tellingly, he says she was “treated with no dignity and respect; left repeatedly in an unsafe situation which resulted in this unnecessary serious injury”.

• He claims that the woman was left unsupervised – which matches many other examples in Forth Valley where injury and death have followed failures of falls prevention practice

• He claims that this happened “repeatedly” - which mirrors numerous examples already in the public domain where nurses flouted standard protocols for falls prevention on wards in Forth Valley

• He claims that serious injury – avoidable serious injury – was the result: again, a repeat of many other examples.

Link to report: https://www.careopinion.org.uk/510316

July 30, 2019

A relative describes how a nurse left their mother – a vulnerable, frail patient with mobility problems and delirium – unattended on the toilet. The relative says their mother was “an extremely high falls risk”.

The relative says:

• “As there was only one nurse present one of the visitors assisted them into the toilet. The nurse stepped outside of the bathroom to give Mum some privacy whilst she done the toilet but instead of waiting, she returned to her office and continued on with her paperwork, this meant that one of the visitors had to keep an eye on Mum.

• “When she was done, the visitor who’d been keeping an eye on Mum went and got the nurse who came back and after a few seconds said that Mum wasn’t finished so left again.

• “This meant that again the visitor had to watch mum on the toilet as she kept trying to get up as she was claiming she was finished, her mobility is just too poor for her to be left alone as she is an extremely high fall risk.

• “Another visitor went to try and find the nurse who was no longer in the office so had to ask a student to assist. Another 3-4 minutes passed before two student nurses attended to mum who at this point was very anxious and was trying to get up from the toilet.”

Link to report: https://www.careopinion.org.uk/682252

May 22, 2022

Relative of an elderly patient highlights a number of failures of care.

The relative said:

• Basic personal care not undertaken

• Observations not recorded regularly enough

• Elderly patients not mobilised

• Medication not locked away

Link to report: https://www.careopinion.org.uk/941148

 

 

 

This is an independent website which aims to collect and publish links to information in the public domain relating to falls that have followed failures of nursing care at Forth Valley Royal Hospital and within NHS Forth Valley.

This website is not connected with NHS Forth Valley or Forth Valley Royal Hospital - but it would like to know why patients keep falling, are injured - and sometimes go on to die - after falls on wards where nursing protocols have not been observed properly.

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