Dying cancer victim waited nine hours on an A&E trolley
A TERMINALLY-ILL pensioner waited nine hours on a trolley in A&E before being admitted to hospital, it was claimed yesterday. And when she was given a bed, Tina Kinsey, 67 suffered unnecessarily in her final days because of failures in her care, her daughter said.
Mrs Kinsey, who had cancer, was taken to Glan Clwyd Hospital, in Bodelwyddan, North Wales, following a fall. After her nine-hour wait in casualty, she was given a bed on a general ward.
Mrs Kinsey, from nearby Rhyl, died three days later, on November 1 last year. Her daughter, Wendy, lodged a formal complaint over ‘a catalogue of errors’ in her care in her final few days.
She said staff were slow to give her mother pain relief and left her choking on her own vomit, before she eventually slipped into a coma and died.
Yesterday it emerged that health bosses have formally apologised for not providing the level of care Mrs Kinsey ‘had the right to expect’ before her death. Her case is the latest in a series of patient horror stories reported to the Daily Mail about services under the Labourrun NHS in Wales.
Wendy, who does not want her surname used, said her mother had endured unnecessary suffering at the hospital in her final days. ‘The morphine patches on her back had expired and needed changing,’ said Wendy, who is also from Rhyl. ‘I continually tried asking staff to help her and give her the pain relief she needed. She was given just paracetamol.
‘ Vomiting uncontrollably and screaming in pain, she didn’t receive any morphine to control her pain until midnight. It was obvious she was dying.
‘Her mouth needed to be suctioned on a regular basis, as she was unable to control her gag reflex and was choking on her own vomit. It took a long time for staff to arrive when she needed help, or not at all.
‘The lack of communication about what was happening was appalling. She spent at least nine hours on a trolley in A&E.’
Angela Hopkins, director of nursing at Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, which runs the hospital, said: ‘I am very sorry that, at this extremely difficult time, Mrs Kinsey did not receive the level of care that she had the right to expect.
‘We have been investigating the concerns raised by the family. We will be contacting the family to share our findings and it would not be appropriate for us to discuss these matters in public, although I fully accept that there were aspects of Mrs Kinsey’s care, and communication with the family, that should have been much better.’