Girl killed by diet pills after doctor ‘failed to ask for help’
A YOUNG woman died from an overdose of diet pills after being inappropriately treated at hospital on an ‘overwhelmingly’ busy day, an inquest heard yesterday.
Bethany Shipsey, 21, was left on a trolley in a packed corridor before being seen by a junior doctor trained in Iran who was dealing with a drug he had ‘never seen before’.
Miss Shipsey had been in the care of mental health professionals for almost two years and was not considered a suicide risk despite saying it was her fifteenth overdose, the hearing at Worcestershire coroner’s court was told.
She was rushed to Worcestershire Royal Hospital in February last year while on home leave from a psychiatric ward, after texting a friend: ‘I have just overdosed on DNP.’
She had swallowed 30 Dinitrophenol pills just days after her psychiatric team found a bag of the tablets in her jacket and warned her about the dangers of taking them. The inquest heard Miss Shipsey had suffered mental health problems after being sexually abused by former boyfriend Barry Finch, who is serving a sixyear rape sentence.
Dr Alireza Niroumand, the emergency junior doctor who treated her, told the inquest he should have called the poisons unit because he had no experience of dealing with DNP, an industrial chemical historically used as an explosive and herbicide.
‘This was my first experience encountering the drug,’ he said.
‘Miss Shipsey was waiting at the end of the corridor because the department was full of beds waiting to be seen.
‘It was one of the busiest days I have seen at Worcestershire A&E. We had probably been trying too hard.’ Dr Niroumand said Miss Shipsey’s father had told him ‘it seems like my daughter took something quite dangerous’.
The doctor said he did not use the database ‘Toxbase’ to learn about the drug because the files he needed had been given to him by a nurse. Coroner Geraint Williams asked him: ‘When you do not know the drug, surely it is even more important to get specialist advice?’
Dr Niroumand said Miss Shipsey was sitting on the bed holding a sick bowl and ‘without any particular abnormality’. He was told she had taken the overdose three or four hours earlier and decided against calling the poisons department. He said he admitted this was a mistake and would act differently next time.
The inquest heard he had seen Miss Shipsey at around 6.30pm and she died just before 11pm.
Dr Kudlur Chandrappa, a senior consultant psychiatrist at the hospital, said Miss Shipsey was suffering from an emotionally unstable personality disorder.
Doctors had discussed her returning to a new house opposite her parents’ home and Dr Chandrappa said in February a sandwich bag with 24 red and yellow pills had been found in her jacket.
The psychiatrist said: ‘ We became aware of her using diet pills the previous week from the family and we had spoken about the dangerous effects of her using them. Miss Shipsey had informed us these were the pills she had bought earlier and stopped using it and had no intention of using them further.’
Mr Chandrappa added: ‘She was not thinking of suicide or suicidal thoughts. I didn’t consider she was at risk of taking her own life in the middle of February.’
Kirsty South, a senior sister and co-ordinator of the A&E department at the time Miss Shipsey was admitted, told the inquest: ‘It was one of the most challenging shifts we have worked. It was more than busy. I would say [ the number of patients] was very close to exceptional.’
The inquest continues.
‘Left on trolley in packed corridor’