medical negligence & injustice: year 4

[jooms]

I sent this off yesterday as individual emails to a number of people, organisations including parliamentarians MPs, MEPs, MSPs. I do not expect any action let alone any replies from this but I hope that I can make some of them feel uncomfortable. I shall make this public so that others know who these people are should they, at any time, make any claims about satisfactory NHS Complaint Procedures.

http://www.medicalneglect2.webs.com/

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest." - Weisel, Elie
　
　

medical negligence & injustice

28 May, 2010
　
7th June 2006 Lilibeth Ooms

Approaching the 4th anniversary of the death of my wife Lilibeth (and what could have been our 26th wedding anniversary), this communication is to remind all of the injustice done by the establishment in covering up clinically negligent standards of her medical treatment at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness.
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." ~Thomas Jefferson

Regardless of the excuses and explanations that the Ombudsman accepted in order to conclude that individual clinical actions, diagnoses, and judgements were "reasonable" or "not unreasonable", the following statements are factual:

• A diagnosis of possible sclerosing peritonitis was made in 2004.
• From the time of her hospitalisation in 2004 up to her hospitalisation in May 2006 she was not offered prophylactic treatment for peritoneal sclerosis even though, during the same period, patients with the same condition in some other NHS hospitals were.
• The Nephrologist, at a meeting during NHS Complaint Procedures, stated that she presented with no symptoms between 2004 and 2006 but the Ombudsman said later that she had.
• She was admitted into hospital 3 times in the last 5 days of April 2006 and was discharged twice with 2 different diagnoses.
• On her 3rd admission, she underwent abdominal surgery (laparotomy) on May 1st 2006 for suspected closed loop bowel obstruction but in surgery no obstruction was observed.
• Whether or not surgery was expertly done (no evidence!) it caused multiple intestinal perforations and, as a consequence, septicaemia.
• The Independent Reviewer of the NHS complaint offered his opinion that medical treatment would have been preferable to surgical intervention.
• She consented to surgery without being told about the risks involved or about other alternative treatment options.
• She was unhappy with her treatment and on May 27th she asked me to explore the possibility of transfer to another hospital and I conveyed this by letter to the hospital’s Consultant Nephrologist.
• On the morning of June 7th I again conveyed my wife’s concerns about the management of her dialysis to the Nephrologist responsible and I was accused of interfering.
• She died 3 hours later while dialysing.
• The Hospital’s Independent Reviewer and some of the Ombudsman’s expert medical witnesses criticised the Nephrologist’s aggressive removal of fluid during haemodialysis.
• The post-mortem revealed that pericarditis was the main cause of death but in more than 5 weeks of hospitalisation she received no cardiac consultation and only 1 ECG examination.
• There was no investigation of her cardiac symptoms in the day or two before she died and no differential diagnosis was made of pericarditis.
• The Independent Reviewer of the NHS complaint suggested that there was no investigation because some doctors believed that she was going to die (futile care/involuntary euthanasia?).
• The Do Not Attempt Resuscitation Order was made and implemented without the knowledge or consent of either my wife or myself.

The Ombudsman did not investigate some evidence and some of my questions have never received answers.
The Procurator Fiscal gave the reason "not in public interest" (?!) for refusing to investigate.
The General Medical Council also refused to investigate my complaint giving the reason that the Ombudsman had already done so but my complaint to GMC was about issues arising from the Ombudsman’s report and could, therefore, not have been dealt with by the Ombudsman.

I would like those parliamentarians who I have contacted previously and now to reflect on their indifference to injustices by the establishment cover-up of medical negligence.
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."- Bishop Desmond Tutu

I am on a crusade to shame politicians about their indifference to injustices done on citizens by the establishment.
I am on a campaign to replace the biased procedures of NHS complaints, the Ombudsman, GMC, Procurator Fiscal, and other government regulated or appointed institutions that are clearly designed to protect the establishment against complaints.
　
"In the order of nature…the state precedes the individual." – Aristotle

　
　
http://www.medicalneglect2.webs.com/


Jan Ooms

　

J.Ooms@btinternet.com