Hospitals are killing people, say British daily papers Tuesday 03 July 2012

from the web site of the DAILY MIRROR:

Left to die of thirst: Dehydrated NHS patient, 22, even rang police as hospital staff refused to give him water

After Kane died, as his family clung to his lifeless body, a nurse asked them whether they had “finished” and could she “bag him up?”

Before op: Kane loved to keep fit and was a keen runner

A man dying of dehydration in an NHS hospital phoned police from his bed begging for help after being refused water by staff, an inquest was told yesterday.

And after 22-year-old Kane Gorny died, as his family clung to his lifeless body, a nurse asked them whether they had “finished” and could she “bag him up?”

Fighting back tears, his mother Rita Cronin described seeing her son’s body at the hospital.

“He was lying flat on his back,” she told the inquest. “But he was dead. He was already dead. I felt sick.”

She told how earlier she had been repeatedly fobbed off by staff when she told them her son was seriously ill, realising he had not been given fluids or medication linked to previous treatment for brain cancer.

Rita first realised something was wrong when her son called her in distress after a routine hip operation the day before he died on May 28, 2009.

“He sounded really, really distressed,” she told Westminster coroner’s court.

“He said, ‘They won’t give me anything to drink’ and ‘I’ve called the police you better get here quickly, they’re all standing around the bed getting their stories straight’.”

She rushed to St George’s Hospital in Tooting, South London where Kane was “confused and angry” and shouting abuse at staff.

Despite telling doctors he was not behaving normally, one asked her if Kane was “coming off booze” and another wanted to know if he was “always like this?”

When police turned up to answer Kane’s call for help, they were turned away by doctors.

Kane, who worked at Waitrose, had been training to become a locksmith.

He was fit and a keen runner and footballer until he was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour in 2008.

Just weeks after being given the all-clear from his cancer, it emerged steroids used to treat him had weakened his hips, and Kane ended up in St George’s for the replacement op.

The inquest also heard Kane had been prescribed hydrocortisone which can increase the body’s retention of fluids.

Refused: Kane was so desperate for water he rang 999

But when he became distressed after being refused water, staff had him restrained by security guards and sedated him with strong medication to calm him down.

Later, he was put in a side room, where no one visited him for the rest of the evening.

Rita told the hearing, also attended by Kane’s dad Peter: “It felt to me like the two locum doctors were nervous about calling anyone more senior than them, I would have expected them to do that.”

Realising he could not have been given his night-time medication, Rita asked a nurse when he would be receiving his dose.

The nurse promised to flag it up with the night nurse. But the next day when Rita arrived at the hospital at 7.45am, her son looked worse.

“His lips were very swollen and his tongue was swollen,” she told the hearing. He just looked delirious.

Three nurses were standing outside the room. I said, ‘There’s something wrong with my son’.

“The night nurse said ‘he’s had a good night and there’s nothing wrong with him.’

“I said, ‘He’s not well’ and the other nurse tutted and said ‘She’s already told you he had a good night,’ and with that they walked off.”

It was then Kane’s mother noticed Kane’s tablets sitting by his bed.

Rita said she then approached the locum doctor, who tried to reassure her it “wouldn’t do him any harm” to miss a dose of his medication.

So she approached another more senior doctor who took action and called staff in to try to save Kane.

Rita said: “It suddenly dawned on me he hasn’t had his medication, hasn’t had his bloods done, nobody’s given him a drink, nobody’s bothered to put his drip back on him.

"Nobody’s done anything since he became aggressive.”

Kane’s family were asked to wait outside the room while doctors tried desperately to save his life.

Following his death from dehydration, they were asked to help move his body so a nurse could fit a clean sheet.

The inquest was told that later a nurse asked them: “Have you finished seeing your son yet? Can I bag him up now?”

The death certificate said Mr Gorny had died because of a ‘water deficit’ and ‘hypernatraemia’ – a medical term for dehydration.

It sparked a Serious Untoward Incident investigation at the hospital and was referred to the police by the coroner.

The hearing continues.

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