NHS fined £200k after Dunkirk hero dies falling off trolley... but gets four years to pay
AN NHS trust fined £200,000 after a war hero was fatally injured in a fall from a hospital trolley was given four years to pay – after a judge heard it was almost £30million in the red.
Dunkirk veteran Major James Fyfe, 90, broke his neck and cut his head while being wheeled for a routine Xray on a suspected fractured hip.
Major Fyfe, who joined the Army at 17 in 1938 and had been attached to the Royal Signals, was lying on a trolley that had not had the sides properly secured and fell from the bed.
The grandfather died of pneumonia a month later, having never recovered from the broken neck he sustained at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading. He had been taken to the hospital after a fall at home in Wokingham, Berkshire.
The Royal Berkshire Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which has a deficit of £ 29.6million, admitted a charge of breach by an employer of general duty, other than to an employee, relating to the failure to properly secure the hospital bed.
Its chairman, Graham Sims – a former boss of Little Chef – and Jean O’Callaghan, the Trust’s chief executive, were in court on Friday as Judge Angela Morris handed down the fine and a £76,305 costs order over the incident on March 27, 2011.
Major Fyfe came off the beaches of Dunkirk in 1940 and then travelled to India with the Royal Signals. He continued serving in the Army after the Second World War and then spent ten years as a school bursar. A statement read by his daughter, Amanda Fyfe, 54, a company director, said: ‘Until someone in your family dies other than through natural causes, you cannot understand the effect it has on you and the destruction it causes. We are in a dark pit that seems to get darker. We will never forget the 48 hours after his fall. He was in pain and moaning so much but nobody came to help him.
‘My mum blames herself for allowing the ambulance to take him to hospital. We all blame ourselves but none of us are responsible for his death. We placed our trust in the hospital which failed in so many ways so many times over.’
Gordon Menzies, prosecuting on behalf of the Health and Safety Executive, told Reading Crown Court the trolley had moveable sides which needed to click into place in order to prevent a patient from falling out.
But the trolley that Major Fyfe had been placed on was corroded in places and key mechanisms including a spring inside the side bars, were missing.
‘The trolley sides were insecure and any amount of pressure would have been enough to retract it to a down position,’ he said. ‘And that is exactly what happened on that day.
‘Having fallen out, Major Fyfe suffered a broken neck and a cut to his head. The injuries he sustained on that day had a causal connection with his death.’ Mr Menzies said the trolley’s manufacturer recommended twiceyearly maintenance, but t the trolley Major Fyfe fell from had only been looked at three times in four years.
James Ageros QC, defending, apologised on behalf of the Trust for what he described as a ‘human tragedy’.
He asked for the trust to be given five years to pay the fine. But the judge suggested three years would be more appropriate before allowing it four years.
Judge Morris said: ‘I am aware of the difficult financial situation of the Trust and the strains on it for both more resources and with limited funding, but the sentence I have imposed must send out a message that this is a very serious matter. I will order that the sum must be paid by 2020.’
‘The hospital failed in so many ways’