A 92-year-old woman died just minutes after being wrongly discharged from hospital – after two doctors misdiagnosed bleeding in her heart as a chest infection.
Frail Evelyn Jones fell unconscious in her son’s car when her heart ruptured shortly after she left hospital in the middle of a freezing night last December.
Son Robin, 51, was told by a 999 operator to drag his mother’s lifeless body onto the pavement and perform CPR on her and wait for an ambulance.
An inquest into Evelyn’s death heard two doctors misdiagnosed her heart problem as pneumonia – a severe chest infection.
Devastated Robin, who cared for his elderly mother for 10 years, is now suing the hospital for negligence, accusing staff of letting her die in an ”undignified manner”.
Robin, from Binley, Coventry, said: ”I object to the fact she was discharged when she was so obviously ill. Even a lay person, I could see she was in distress.
”If she had been kept in hospital she would have died in comfort in a hospital bed, and I wouldn’t have suffered like this.
”I feel my mother was treated with total disregard by the hospital staff that evening. ”She should have been kept in and monitored.
”Instead she was sent home in the early hours of a freezing cold December morning and died in an undignified manner.”
Robin also claims doctors failed to record his mother’s complaints of suffering pain in her chest and armpit – a key symptom of heart problems.
An inquest heard Evelyn was rushed toh ospital on December 15 last year after struggling to breath and with a soaring temperature.
When she arrived at Accident and Emergency Dr Harjinder Chagger diagnosed her with a chest infection.
He also ran an ECG test – to measure the electrical activity of the heart – which showed ”abnormal results”, but no action was taken.
Instead he ordered more tests to be carried out but finished his shift and went home before the results came back.
Another female junior doctor, who was not named, examined Evelyn and prescribed antibiotics and discharged her shortly before 1am.
But before Robin finished the two-and-a-half mile journey home Evelyn collapsed in the passenger seat.
Robin pulled the car over to the side of the road and when he dialled 999 an operator told him to drag her out of the car and perform CPR on her and wait for an ambulance.
He desperately performed CPR for five minutes before the ambulance arrived but she died before returning to hospital.
A post mortem revealed Evelyn had suffered a heart attack which caused part of her heart to die and leak blood, but this was not detected by the doctors.
Verdict: Natural causes
