A British woman’s family may sue after she died in a government hospital due to “treatable condition” that doctors somehow missed, the Daily Mail reports.
Margaret Lamberty, 45, died in April from multiple organ failure after a blood clot went undetected at a National Health Service institution, the University Hospital of North Staffordshire.
“My mum was failed by the doctors and nurses,” Lamberty’s daughter told The Daily Mail. “She was abandoned in a side room while she died in agonizing pain.”
Lamberty had a history of blood clots and was on blood-thinning medication to treat her condition, but her daughter says despite their warnings, the National Health Service hospital failed to find the blood clot in her bladder that caused her death.
“It was horrific for her and the worst thing I have ever had to see. We told the doctors over and over again she suffered from blood clots,” her daughter Laura said. “We are determined to get justice for mum and find out the truth about what happened. No one should go through what she did.”
After being admitted for stomach pain, Lamberty received blood tests, CT scans, X-rays and a laparoscopy. She was then placed in a room to wait for more tests, where her condition rapidly deteriorated.
It wasn’t until two days later, after her struggle to get physicians’ attention, that Lamberty was transferred to critical care and doctors discovered the blood clot. Lamberty died the following day.
“The hospital told me that she had more tests when she was critical and that doctors found a blood clot on her bowel which had shut all her organs down,” Laura said. “I couldn’t believe it. Mum had test after test. How could the doctors miss it?”
The Lamberty family is accusing the hospital of abandoning their mother and say they are preparing to sue. Lamberty’s four children report that she was left by NHS doctors and nurses to lie in blood-stained sheets for 24 hours and had to wait 30 minutes after asking for help with her pain.
Lamberty’s eldest daughter, Laura, photographed her mother’s condition three days prior to her death, when she was forced to crawl down a hallway to get a nurse’s attention to ask for painkillers.
“She was in so much pain. I pressed the buzzer to call for a nurse and we waited 30 minutes,” Laura said. “I took pictures of her on the floor of the hospital because I wanted to show them to the doctors to prove how much agony she was in.”
A spokesman for the hospital, the University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust, made a statement that they’d received a letter from Lamberty’s family and that “the trust would like to offer its sincere condolences to Mrs. Lamberty’s family.”
The National Health Service, a nationalized, government-run health care system, is notorious for poor care and shortages of doctors and nurses. The hospital in question was found to have higher mortality rates than average in a 2011 review, according to the Daily Mail.