GP practice ‘denied widow chance to see dying husband’
A WIDOW has accused her local GP practice of “callous” insensitivity after staff failed to inform her that her husband was dying in the next room.
Caroline Currie said the behaviour of staff at the Old Fletton Surgery in Peterborough deprived her of the chance to be with David Dixon Currie, 50, who died of heart failure in October 2016, in his last few moments of life.
She said she had to wait more than an hour and a half before being briefed, during which time she saw clues that an emergency was taking place. This included medics “running around with defibrillators” and shouting “code blue”, the term for resuscitation.
When she finally saw a doctor, she alleges he was “trembling like a leaf ” and that he blurted out the words “cause of death” but then refused to confirm her husband’s condition.
Mrs Currie, 39, wants a forthcoming inquest to examine the preparedness of GP practices to handle medical emergencies and the way in which healthcare staff communicate with loved ones at such times. She also alleges that doctors and nurses ignored her husband’s symptoms and failed to adequately treat him on the day he died, a claim the surgery denies.
“I cannot believe I was there in the same place with him for all that time and I never got to see him,” said Mrs Currie. “I was moved aside, but I could have said I want to be with him, I want to hold his hand.”
Old Fletton Surgery expressed “sincere sympathy” to Mrs Currie but did not respond to a request to comment, citing patient confidentiality. However, in correspondence seen by The Sunday Telegraph the practice provides a detailed defence of the medical treatment it claims it provided Mr Dixon Currie.
A pre-inquest review will take place a Cambridgeshire Coroner’s Court on Friday.