Don’t let the doctors get away with this
Gran’s dying words to family after hospital missed DVT. Three years on, NHS pays out
A DYING grandmother’s last words to her family after doctors misdiagnosed her condition were: ‘Make sure they don’t get away with this.’
More than three years after Doreen Trowsdale’s death, her daughter has seen her mother’s last wish fulfilled after receiving an £8,000 payout from the NHS trust responsible for her bungled treatment.
Mrs Trowsdale, 77, may well have been saved if deep vein thrombosis (DVT) symptoms had been recognised by doctors at York Hospital’s A&E department when she was taken there by ambulance.
Instead she was given antibiotics for a urinary tract infection and sent home, her family said.
Despite being correctly diagnosed when taken to a different hospital the following morning, the widow died a week and a half later from a pulmonary embolism – or blockage of an artery – caused by DVT.
Health chiefs apologised and accepted the mistake resulted in Mrs Trowsdale’s premature death.
Her daughter Fiona Nixon, 43, of Driffield, East Yorkshire, said: ‘My mum had been so well and had so much to look forward to. Losing her came as a massive shock to the whole family.
‘The whole experience has completely ruined any faith we had in the health service. None of us trust doctors any more.
‘It makes me so angry that we lost her in such a horrific way – it was such an awful way to go – and something could have been done about it.’
Mrs Trowsdale’s final words were said to Mrs Nixon and her husband Philip, 45, at her hospital bedside. Mrs Nixon said: ‘She was terrified because she knew they had made a mistake. Her last days were filled with fear.’
The grandmother was taken to hospital from her Driffield home in March 2013 suffering from swelling, tenderness and warm skin in her left leg – the primary symptoms of DVT.
She was also very confused and short of breath.
She allegedly waited two hours to see a doctor at the casualty unit and was given antibiotics for an infection. Mrs Nixon said her mother was still confused in the morning and her leg pain was so acute she couldn’t even use the toilet unaided.
This time she was taken to Scarborough Hospital where doctors discovered the DVT had already caused the pulmonary embolism that killed her days later.
Mrs Trowsdale, a former secretary who lost her husband Peter two years earlier aged 75, left two children and three grandchildren. Her son Andrew Trowsdale, 50, was so stressed by what happened he took early retirement from his job with the fire service.
And her ten-year-old grandson Charlie still gets very upset when talking about his grandmother.
Mrs Nixon, who runs a garden and homeware business with her husband, has received a letter of apology and condolences from the York Hospital trust’s chief executive Patrick Crowley.
It said: ‘I am very sorry that your mother’s pulmonary embolism was not diagnosed, and that this resulted in the sad death of your mother.
‘I take this opportunity to offer you and your family my sincere sympathy and regret. I recognise that this has been a tragic loss and undoubtedly an incredibly difficult experience for you.
‘Please accept my sincere condolences and I hope that the resolution of this claim goes some way to assisting you in the grieving process.’
York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust confirmed they had apologised to Mrs Trowsdale’s family and reached a settlement, while reiterating their ‘sincere condolences’.