Compensation For NHS Negligence: Family of Over Sedated Victim Awarded £65,000

The family of Nicola Ames, a lady who died after being given three times the recommended dose of a sedative, has been awarded £65,000 in compensation resulting from negligent medical treatment.

Miss Ames was admitted to Southend Hospital in 2009 with acute pancreatitis, where she was sedated when she became agitated.

The following day, medical staff had difficulty dealing with her confusion, lack of co-operation and agitation, event though they had given a significant dose of sedative Haloperidol.

Miss Ames then became hypoxic, which happens when insufficient oxygen reaches body tissues, however, staff failed to transfer her to the intensive care department where she would have been put on a ventilator to help her breath properly. When the hypoxia worsened staff continued to administer the sedative, eventually giving her more than three times the recommended dose. Miss Ames suffered a cardiac arrest and died shortly after midnight on December 18.

An investigation later established that over ten-and-a-half hours, Miss Ames was given 55mg of Haloperidol, compared to a recommended daily maximum dosage of 15mg.

“We once again offer our sincere condolences to Nicola’s family and recognise the circumstances leading up to and regarding her death in 2009 have made this a particularly difficult time for them. We recognise the standard of care we provided at that time was not of the standard we would expect and again we apologise for this,” Jacqueline Totterdell, the chief executive of Southend Hospital, comments.

Kidney wrongly removed

Meanwhile, Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust, has paid £4,000 to the family of a cancer patient who accidentally had her kidney removed when she should have been receiving chemotherapy.

The patient concerned had routine scans and blood tests, which doctors thought were suggestive of a new kidney cancer. Just four years earlier, the patient had undergone treatment for ovarian cancer. Medics at Walsall Manor operated to remove her kidney, which led to bowel damage.

However, after the operation, tests showed that the patient’s cancer was actually recurrent ovarian cancer. The patient received palliative chemotherapy – treatment given to relieve symptoms rather than cure. Yet the patient was plagued by infections at the site of the kidney surgery for the rest of her life before she sadly died.

“The doctors should have done more to obtain an accurate diagnosis before operating to remove the kidney. Also, the surgeon who carried out the kidney surgery should have recognised that there would be a high risk of bowel damage and done more to avoid it,” an official report into the incident said.

Making a compensation claim against the NHS

You are entitled to expect a certain standard of treatment from those providing medical assistance to you. If this treatment falls below standard you may be entitled to recover the cost of the private medical treatment needed to correct the failings on the part of those originally treating you. Our goal at IBB Solicitors is to obtain justice for victims of the negligence by others, by securing compensation that reflects their pain and suffering, as well as related financial losses including loss of earnings, treatment costs and specialist care costs.

If you want to enquire about making a clinical negligence claim, please contact a member of our team on 01895 207835 or 01895 207295. Alternatively, you can send an email with your name and contact information and brief details as to the nature of the accident/clinical negligence and the injuries sustained to malcolm.underhill@ibblaw.co.uk and one of our team will be able to help you.

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