73-year-old British woman dies after doctors review wrong ‘do not resuscitate’ patient notice

Pat Dawson has worked as an NHS hospital nurse for 30 years. (representative picture)

A healthy retired nurse in the UK has died after hospital staff checked the wrong patient’s chart, which contained a “do not resuscitate” order.according to subwayPat Dawson, 73, died at Royal Blackburn Hospital in Lancashire in September last year. She worked as a nurse in an NHS hospital for 30 years. She was enjoying retirement when she was first rushed to the emergency room with a suspected intestinal obstruction.

That night, an hour before Ms Dawson visited her son, the A&E was classified as “overcapacity and overstretched”. subway the report said. She was moved to the resuscitation area due to the intense pressure on the emergency room. She was pronounced dead hours later, according to media reports. An inquest heard on Tuesday how the retired nurse would have survived if paramedics had not checked the wrong patient’s chart, which contained a “do not resuscitate” order.

Ms Dawson’s son John said in a statement: “It is unbelievable that her failure was catastrophic, not just for one person, but for those who took the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm to others. Doctors, our mothers paid the ultimate price.”

A court heard on Tuesday that at least two nurses failed to bring back a toilet for 73-year-old Ms Dawson to use, leaving her waiting for a “considerable period of time”. Her son eventually pushed Ms Dawson to the toilet himself. He often asked his mother if she was okay, but the third time he asked, he got no response.

When hospital staff entered the bathroom, they found the 73-year-old man leaning against the wall with black liquid flowing from his mouth. They noticed she had no pulse and quickly began CPR, which resulted in return of spontaneous circulation.

Ms Dawson was then taken into a room but her heart stopped beating for a second time. The nurse went to check the medical records and came back to inform her son that she had been given “do not resuscitate” and died less than 4 hours after arriving at the hospital.

As John sat with his mother after she was pronounced dead, a senior nurse told him of the mistake. The court heard the nurse not only checked the records of a completely different patient but also failed to check the NHS number on Ms Dawson’s wristband.

They didn’t even confirm her age and gender on the note. The patient whose notes were confused with Ms Dawson’s was a 90-year-old man, the court heard.

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“Unfortunately, tragically and catastrophically, these records are not Pat’s; they belong to a completely different male patient in his 90s,” regional coroner Kate Bisset said, according to media reports ;Pat clearly does not possess these characteristics.”

“People quickly realized that the DNR was not in place, but unfortunately, it was too late,” she added.

Emergency adviser Dr Ahmed Alaboud told the inquest it was an “inadvertent mistake because (staff) were in too much of a hurry”. He admitted Ms Dawson would have likely been resuscitated had paramedics attempted this.

The court found negligence and concluded that had the errors not been made, Ms Dawson would not have died. Since the 73-year-old’s death, Royal Blackburn Hospital has also implemented several systemic changes after an internal investigation uncovered various issues.