Paramedic told young mother suffering fatal reaction to pills to ‘stop faking it’
A YOUNG mother was accused by paramedics of attentionseeking while she suffered a fatal reaction to painkillers. Beatrice Lovane, 22, was told to stop faking her symptoms as she lay on the floor, breathing quickly and rolling her eyes, an inquest heard. An ambulance crew refused to put her in a wheelchair, insisting she was well enough to walk. One paramedic told her: ‘Stop being funny and behave yourself... stop humiliating yourself and walk to the ambulance.’ When Miss Lovane’s mother asked if her daughter could have a wheelchair, the paramedic replied: ‘We are not giving her a wheelchair, there is nothing wrong with her legs.’ Not until she appeared to stop breathing was she put on a stretcher and taken to hospital. But she died less than two hours later. The behaviour of the paramedics was revealed only because some of it was recorded on a police officer’s bodycam. Footage emerged during the inquest. A post-mortem examination showed that Miss Lovane had undiagnosed fatty liver disease and the co- codamol tablets prescribed by her GP for stomach pain had caused organ failure. Greater Manchester North Coroner Lisa Hashmi criticised the ambulance crew’s gross ‘ failure to provide basic care’ for Miss Lovane, who had a toddler son. ‘She was deprived of her dignity and precious little was done to save this young woman. The paramedics failed Beatrice,’ Miss Hashmi said. If they had acted differently, ‘it would have improved her chances of survival’. However, in her narrative verdict, the coroner added: Whilst there ‘ was a gross failure to provide basic medical care it is not possible to link this to her death.’ She criticised the ambulance crew for not giving full details of the incident in their initial statements. ‘Families shouldn’t have to beg for care and investigation. I am very disconcerted by the fact that it took [a police officer’s] bodycam footage to establish the truth around this matter,’ Miss Hashmi said. Miss Lovane, from Rochdale, fell ill at 9.40pm on August 26 last year. Her mother Maria Lovane, 55, told the inquest it took the paramedics ‘almost three hours’ to get her to hospital. She said: ‘I could see her eyes rolling back so I asked them if they were going to take her to hospital. ‘I asked them if they could give her oxygen but they said it would not be safe. One paramedic said to her, “Stop being funny and behave yourself”. They told me she was faking it and doing it for attention. ‘They were trying to pull her down the stairs. One of them said to me, “We are not giving her a wheelchair, there is nothing wrong with her legs”. Sergeant Phillip Canavan, whose bodycam recorded part of the incident, said that a paramedic who had summoned him told him: ‘We are not sure if she is putting this on.’ Giving evidence, paramedic Anthony Morris apologised for the way he dealt with Miss Lovane and said he would deal with such a case ‘so differently now’. He said the patient was not co-operative and did not appear unwell. A second member of the crew, trainee paramedic Lisa Chadwick told the inquest: ‘I just wish I had done something differently or more quickly. ‘It was a new role and I would have liked more training support than I received.’ Both paramedics, along with a third member of the crew, have now been suspended by North West Ambulance Service as a result of evidence put before the inquest.