Specialist Lawyers Have Secured Settlement For Woman’s Daughter After NHS Trust Admitted Liability

The daughter of a Halifax woman, who died from a treatable condition despite seeing her GP and going to A&E, is speaking out after the NHS Trust responsible apologised and admitted failures in its care.

Shirley Hemingway died aged 77 on 20th January 2013, one week after being discharged from the A&E Department at the Calderdale Royal Hospital, Halifax, part of the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, the same hospital where her daughter, Dawn Hemingway, worked for 36 years from 1978 to 2014.

Peter Hemingway, Shirley’s husband, instructed expert medical negligence lawyers at Irwin Mitchell to investigate her death following concerns that she had not received the appropriate care.

Shirley had gone to A&E on 13th January, two days after visiting her GP regarding abdominal pain and vomiting which she had suffered for four days. Her GP noted that she was pale and suspected that she was suffering from constipation.  When the medication he prescribed to her failed to improve Shirley’s condition she attended A&E as had been recommended.

At A&E, Shirley underwent abdominal x-rays and had blood tests taken and the results of these were deemed to be satisfactory enough that she could be discharged.

Since her death, an Inquest has found that there was a clear history consistent with a small bowel obstruction with vomiting and constipation. Furthermore, the expert instructed by the Coroner found that Shirley’s x-rays were also consistent with a small bowel obstruction and that she should have been reviewed by the surgical team rather than being discharged.

The family was made to wait over two years for the Inquest itself as the doctor at the centre of the case, Dr Nafeesa Tabussum, resigned and moved abroad. It is believed she moved back home. However, the Coroner’s efforts to track down Dr Tabussum were unsuccessful and the Inquest eventually went ahead without her.

Dawn Hemingway, who continued the claim following her father’s death in September 2016, said: “Myself, the rest of our family and friends were all left devastated by losing mum. It is hard to read the Trust’s admissions without getting angry or frustrated by the fact they failed to provide mum with the correct care immediately.

“I worked in the National Health Service for over 36 years as a nurse at Calderdale Royal Hospital and during my career my colleagues and I always had patient safety as the number one priority. The standard of care in the NHS has to be 100% at all times and sadly in my mum’s case it fell well short. The system completely failed her.

“I am grateful to the lawyers at Irwin Mitchell for helping me hold the Trust to account. While nothing can bring my mum back, I am determined to ensure lessons are learned by the NHS to make sure that this kind of incident does not happen again.”

On 20th January, Shirley collapsed at her home and was taken by ambulance to Calderdale Royal Hospital shortly after 7am. On arrival, a diagnosis of intra-abdominal sepsis was made and over the course of the morning Shirley suffered two cardiac arrests. At 12:03 a decision was made to stop resuscitation.

The legal team at Irwin Mitchell alleged that the NHS Trust had acted negligently by failing to provide Shirley with the appropriate level of care and failing to identify the small bowel obstruction on the x-rays taken or the significance of the abnormal blood tests taken on the 13th January.

Ross McWilliams, the specialist medical negligence lawyer at Irwin Mitchell who is representing the family, said:

Expert Opinion

“Shirley’s family have been left heartbroken after losing her, it has been an incredibly difficult time for Dawn to not only cope with losing her mother, and her father, but also come to terms with the fact that the hospital failed to treat Shirley correctly.

“We work closely with the national charity Sepsis UK and know from speaking to many people affected that sepsis can be a devastating condition with around 37,000 people dying of sepsis each year. But there are very obvious red flag signs which were missed in this case and in many others we have seen from across the UK. Errors of this nature are simply unacceptable when it comes to matters of life and death.

“We will continue to work with the family to ensure lessons are learnt from this case and that patient safety is improved to prevent other patients and families going through what Dawn and the family have sadly had to go through." Ross McWilliams - Partner

If your sepsis was misdiagnosed or wasn't picked up at the earliest possible opportunity, we could help you make a medical negligence claim. Visit our Sepsis Negligence Claims page for more information.