Decision Report 201406081

Summary

Mrs C complained about the care the board provided to her late husband (Mr C) when he attended the Western General Hospital for a scan. Mr C suffered from terminal cancer and had widespread pain which severely restricted his mobility. Mrs C said that Mr C's consultant had recommended he be transferred to hospital with specialist equipment which she said had not happened. She also complained that the mobile scanning unit was not suitable for Mr C due to his restricted mobility and that it did not have appropriate lifting equipment; and that a record was not made of Mr C having fallen in the mobile scanner unit.

We took independent advice from our nursing adviser and found that, although the consultant did not specify any specialist equipment, he had indicated an ambulance would be appropriate to transport Mr C to the mobile scanning unit, so we upheld Mrs C's complaint that this did not happen. We also found that the board had accepted that Mr C's mobility needs could not be met at the mobile scanning unit because it did not have the equipment he needed for being mobilised. However, we did not identify clear evidence to show that Mr C had fallen, so we did not uphold this aspect of the complaint.

Recommendations

We recommended that the board:

• apologise to Mrs C for the failings identified; and
• provide evidence that the learning from this case has been discussed at a multi-disciplinary meeting and fed back to staff.