Condemned to death by NHS doctors
Hospital: Veteran was dying, so went on ‘pathway’ Watchdog: No he wasn’t, and the lack of care killed him
DOCTORS at one of the country’s leading hospitals condemned a war veteran to die on a notorious ‘death pathway’ after they wrongly decided he could not be saved.
Great-grandfather Josef Boberek was admitted to Hammersmith Hospital in West London with a chest infection, but died days later after doctors incorrectly told his family he was at death’s door and deliberately withdrew his fluids and normal medication.
Now an official health watchdog report has revealed that the pensioner would have lived and returned to his normal life had he received proper treatment and not been placed on the discredited Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP).
Mr Boberek’s daughter Jayne, who fought a three-year battle to uncover the truth, said: ‘My father was condemned to an early death by the doctors. They had no right to take his life, and him away from me.’
A damning report by the Health Service Ombudsman found a litany of failings, including:
Doctors claimed Mr Boberek was suffering from terminal heart and kidney failure when he was not;
Although he was frail, he would almost certainly have lived if he had been properly treated;
He was not suffering from dementia, as stated in his medical notes.
In what is believed to be the first time hospital chiefs have publicly accepted that the LCP had ‘killed’ a patient, the Imperial College Healthcare Trust told Miss Boberek that ‘if the failings had not happened, on the balance of probabilities your father would have survived and returned to his nursing home’.
Mr Boberek died in June 2013, months before the LCP – in which dying patients are sedated while treatment is withdrawn – was banned by the Government following claims it was being abused, although critics say it persists under other names. The 92-year-old, who
‘They had no right to take his life’
fled the Nazi invasion of his native Poland and fought with the British Army during the Second World War, was admitted to hospital on May 29, 2013, from his nursing home in Ealing, London, suffering from a chest infection.
The father of two, a former engineer, had made several similar visits and his daughter had no reason to believe this one was anything but routine. In a letter to Miss Boberek earlier this month, trust chief executive Dr Tracey Batten admitted the trust should have provided more hydration and oral fluids.
She said the trust was sorry it had made ‘a number of incorrect diagnoses’ and ‘incorrectly told you that your father was dying and placed him on the Liverpool Care Pathway’. She added: ‘Please accept my unreserved apology that this happened and for the emotional impact that this has caused you.’
Miss Boberek, who has refused an offer of compensation, said: ‘Until recently I had a lot of rage in me, constant rage. I feel that has gone now that I have got some of the answers. But I do feel anger. I feel most of all I don’t want this to happen to others.’