{"id":11409,"date":"2017-01-16T11:19:06","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T11:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/?p=11409"},"modified":"2017-01-16T11:19:06","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T11:19:06","slug":"inquest-into-death-of-person-with-severe-me-in-north-wales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/inquest-into-death-of-person-with-severe-me-in-north-wales\/","title":{"rendered":"Inquest into death of person with severe ME in North Wales"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daily Post<\/strong> article, by Gareth Hughes, 12 January 2017:\u00a0 Coroner questions bed-blocking at Maelor Hospital after woman<\/a>\u00a0accidentally killed herself in A&E<\/p>\n

A coroner is to ask what steps are being taken to tackle the problem of\u00a0 bed-blocking at the Maelor Hospital, Wrexham. John Gittins, the coroner\u00a0for North Wales East and Central, issued a Regulation 28 notice after\u00a0hearing the situation was probably worse today than two years ago.<\/p>\n

Julie Smith, assistant director for nursing with the Betsi Cadwaladr\u00a0University Health Board, told an inquest that demand for beds constantly\u00a0exceeded supply despite various efforts to solve the problem. ‘It is an\u00a0absolutely massive challenge but we are doing our best to manage the\u00a0pressure,’ she said.<\/p>\n

Mrs Smith was giving evidence at an inquest into\u00a0the death of mother-of-four Sarah Ann Tyler, who accidentally killed\u00a0herself in the hospital’s emergency department where she had been on a\u00a0trolley for about eight hours, having been admitted after taking an
\noverdose of paracetamol.<\/p>\n

Miss Tyler, of Ffordd y Gaer, Bradley, was found unconscious with a\u00a0ligature made of an ECG cable around her neck in the early hours of\u00a0February 9, 2015.<\/p>\n

The hearing was told that she had been suffering from depression and\u00a0severe ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) which had left her bed-bound. In a\u00a0statement read at the inquest her partner David Millward, who was father\u00a0to her four children, said she was virtually unable to move and was\u00a0upset at being unable to care for her children. He said she was\u00a0convinced that the chronic fatigue, not a mental health issue, was her\u00a0main problem and she felt she was not receiving the specialist treatment\u00a0for her condition.<\/p>\n

In August, 2014, her son found her with a bungee cord around her neck\u00a0and on February 9 Mr Millward found her with a phone charger cord around\u00a0her neck, so called the out-of-hours doctor. In the doctor’s presence\u00a0she took an overdose of paracetamol and Cocodamol and so she was\u00a0admitted to the emergency department, where she refused to engage with\u00a0staff. While lying on the trolley she disconnected her intra-venous drip
\nseveral times, claiming it had fallen out.<\/p>\n

Senior House Officer Dr Thomas Minton told the inquest: ‘I explained\u00a0what the risks were but she was not giving me anything back.’ Staff\u00a0nurse Kate Roberts said that Miss Tyler was under half-hourly\u00a0observation because of the tablets she had taken and was last seen at\u00a0about 12.20am. About 15 minutes later she was found hanging and despite\u00a0attempts to resuscitate her she died the following day.<\/p>\n

Mrs Smith, who was involved in the serious incident review following the\u00a0tragedy, said various steps had been taken as a result. These included\u00a0psychiatric nurses being involved in assessment at a much earlier stage\u00a0when a patient who has selfharmed arrives in the emergency\u00a0department.<\/p>\n

‘Two years ago nurses used their own professional judgment,’\u00a0she said.<\/p>\n

Asked by the coroner whether such an incident was less likely to occur\u00a0now, Mrs Smith replied: ‘Yes, I believe we have reduced the risk, though\u00a0the improvements are on-going.’ Mr Gittins said his initial fears\u00a0regarding observation of patients had been allayed but he remained\u00a0concerned about the severe problem of finding beds for patients, even\u00a0though he did not believe it played a part in Miss Tyler’s death.<\/p>\n

‘Patient throughput continues to be a problem and perhaps even greater\u00a0now than it was two years ago. I believe it does create a risk,’ he\u00a0added. He recorded a conclusion of accidental death on Miss Tyler, a\u00a0cleaner, as he was not persuaded that she wanted to kill herself as she\u00a0had taken the action in a place where she could expect to be found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daily Post article, by Gareth Hughes, 12 January 2017:\u00a0 Coroner questions bed-blocking at Maelor Hospital after woman\u00a0accidentally killed herself in A&E A coroner is to ask what steps are being taken to tackle the problem of\u00a0 bed-blocking at the Maelor … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5qkYK-2Y1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11410,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11409\/revisions\/11410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}