Grieving Fife parents tell of wait for treatment

A GRIEVING Fife mother has claimed her daughter was abandoned on a hospital trolley for four hours before she died.

Gillian Smith said 41-year-old Elizabeth waited two hours before she was seen by a doctor at Kirkcaldy’s Victoria Hospital, and it was a further two hours before she was transferred to a medical assessment ward.

Elizabeth, who suffered from a serious heart condition, then quickly deteriorated and died the same evening.

Gillian and husband Dennis believe Elizabeth would still be alive if she had been treated sooner.

The Glenrothes woman, who was born with Epstein’s Anomaly and was in and out of hospital all her life, was rushed by ambulance to the Victoria with chest pains and breathing difficulties 18 months ago.

Despite her illness and the fact she was a regular patient, she was not admitted to the coronary care unit but was held on a trolley in A&E for two hours waiting to be examined. And it was two hours after that when she was moved to a ward.

NHS Fife have said all patients in A&E, whether in waiting areas, cubicles or on trolleys, are under clinical supervision and treatment is given where clinically required.

However, Gillian and Dennis believe a lack of specialist help cost Elizabeth her life, and say they are still waiting for answers 18 months on.

The couple complained to NHS Fife about their daughter’s treatment a few weeks after her death, and were eventually invited to a meeting in November.

They have since received a letter from chief executive John Wilson who admitted there had been a suspicion Elizabeth’s pain was coming from her heart.

He said, however, that doctors had only discovered her heart was under strain following blood tests later in the evening.

He added that it was “not ideal” for Elizabeth to have been kept ina&e for four hours.

“There was no explanation and no apology,” said Gillian. “It now looks like we’ll never get answers.”

She said Elizabeth, who also had diabetes, was often in hospital, and added: “If anything ever went wrong she was taken straight to the coronary care unit and put on a heart monitor. But on this occasion, a Sunday afternoon, she was just abandoned on a trolley in A&E.

“The only time a doctor treated her was when her blood sugar levels dropped. It felt as if nobody cared.

“Elizabeth was eventually transferred to a ward after four hours.

“I left her at 8pm and she said, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, mum’.

“The hospital called an hour later to say she’d died of heart failure.”

A spokeswoman for NHS Fife responded: “All patients in A&E, whether in waiting areas, in cubicles or on trolleys are under clinical supervision and treatment is given where clinically required.

“A thorough investigation into the family’s concerns, which involved care in three hospitals across Scotland, was undertaken and a meeting between family members and senior clinicians took place in November 2011.

“Following that meeting we sent a detailed letter to the family in December 2011.

“No one from Ms Smith’s family has come back to us since we wrote.

“If there are outstanding issues we would encourage them to contact us to allow us to investigate and then report back,” added the spokeswoman.

Dennis and Gillian Smith with a photograph of Elizabeth. The couple say they are still waiting for answers.