NHS patient safety: Barry's story

It was the third anniversary of Barry Harris's death on Wednesday. The 67-year-old former civil engineer, who had gone into the Queen's hospital, Burton, in Staffordshire, to have a knee replacement, died at his home three days after being discharged.

An inquest later heard that he had died from an obstruction in his lower intestine due to recurrent twisting. The coroner recorded a verdict of natural causes.

But the family had felt the hospital, part of the Burton Hospital NHS trust, now under special measures because of the quality and safety of care, had been wrong to let Barry go home with constipation medication when they had not diagnosed what had left him with a distended abdomen and feeling uncomfortable.

The initial operation went well, according to his wife Valerie, 70, but when she first went to pick him up five days after she had taken him in, she was told he had to stay because he had not yet had a bowel movement. By the Monday, a week after Barry had been admitted, he underwent a procedure to see what the problem was. She says staff told her "it looked like a kink in the lower intestine". On the Wednesday, he was sent for a further examination. This time he was allowed to go home. "We waited and were given his discharge notes and constipation powders," said Valerie. "They hadn't really formed any actual conclusions as to what was causing his condition. I was a teacher, he was a civil engineer. We didn't question. You put your trust in professional hands. He wanted to go home so I brought him home."

Two days later, stitches were removed from Barry's leg. "He went up and down the stairs and just thought nature would take its course. On Saturday morning, he got up, had a shower, a small slice of toast, had a cup of tea. But later in the day, he collapsed. He had come into the kitchen, and he had what I thought was a fit. I called the neighbours. They came round and called 999. He was dead within the hour."

A few weeks ago, said Valerie, the trust admitted liability and paid the family a "significant" amount, she said. "But it doesn't replace my husband. I feel quite empty about it."

Laura Ralfe, from lawyers Irwin Mitchell, which represented the family, said: "Barry's care at Burton hospital raised a number of urgent questions. Our investigations found hospital staff missed multiple opportunities to investigate the cause of Barry's bowel problems and ignored obvious symptoms, which we believe, if treated, would in all likelihood have avoided his death."

In another case earlier this month, United Lincolnshire Hospital NHS trust was fined £30,000 and ordered to pay more than £15,000 costs for allowing a radiologist to be exposed to more than double the annual dose limit for skin exposure in just over three months. The radiologist at Pilgrim hospital, Boston, used a CT scanner, but favoured an x-ray method, which meant he stayed in the room rather than leaving, as other consultants did.

The hospital said it had taken measures to correct "this isolated incident", reviewing working practices for all staff working with ionising radiation, and developing checklists for all areas that radiologists work in to provide a more comprehensive training record. No patient was exposed to excess radiation.

This article is courtesy from The Guardian.