Rest in Peace
On 9th May 2018 there was an inquest at the Coroner's Court relating to a death of a 54 year old woman at the Pilgrim Hospital. She died two days after she was admitted for sepsis. Was there anything suspicious about her death?
There are two sides to the story. Prior to her admission, she was sick and had an abdominal pain which are typical symptoms of sepsis. Doctors suspect that the source of the infection was in the urinary system. However, before her death she also had lost sight in both her eyes and it was suspected that she had an ear infection as well. This issue was a subject of discussion at the inquest at the Coroner's Court in Boston. It is because the family thought that doctors failed to carry out necessary tests to find the source of the infection.
But, it did not really matter where the source of sepsis was because she was given antibiotics which work on both of these infections. Besides, a doctor explained that she had been treated for suspected infections and if she lived longer they would be able to find the source of the sepsis. However, even a pathologist after carrying out a thorough autopsy was not able to tell in which part of her body the infection started.
Another problem was that a consultant did not see her on her first day of admission to the hospital. He explained at the inquest that she was seen by someone else at the time and so he decided to come back to her. Unfortunately, he forgot about it. However, the doctor was sure that she had received an appropriate treatment. Besides, there is also a positive outcome of this story as the hospital introduced changes in its system of referrals. Since recently, doctors at the hospital started to use a platform to refer patients to other specialists at the same hospital to make sure that no patient is forgotten.
So, we have to accept the fact that doctors are very busy people with plenty of patients and so we cannot always expect too much attention. Besides, we cannot always blame doctors when someone does not get better because, sometimes, despite hard work, doctors efforts come to naught.
Image Source: https://www.omicsgroup.org/articles-admin/disease-images/histoplasmosis-84258.jpg