Health Service Commissioner : first report for session 1982/83 : selected investigations completed April- September 1982.

  • Great Britain. Health Service Commissioner.
Date:
1983
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Health Service Commissioner : first report for session 1982/83 : selected investigations completed April- September 1982. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    hospital on 18 January. He had protested and said that his brother was still making threats of suicide ; he had demanded to see the duty doctor (the SHO) who told him that the decision to discharge his brother had been taken in the full knowledge of his previous medical history. 10. My officer was unable to interview Mrs —— as she had died, but she spoke to Mr ——. He said that he and his wife had visited the complainant’s brother on 12 January and found him walking in the hospital grounds. He had seemed to be rational but had then told them that he felt like throwing himself under a car or lorry. He and his wife did not know whether they should take these threats seriously but his wife was worried that he was being discharged while still making such threats and she wanted to ensure that the hospital staff were aware of them. Accordingly, on their return to the ward, his wife had spoken to one of the nursing staff and afterwards had told him (Mr ——) that, although she was not convinced that their cousin was well enough for discharge, which they understood was to be on the following Friday, she was satisfied with the arrangements made for it. 11. The solicitor, in a letter to the Community Health Council (the CHC), which was passed to the AHA, asked whether the emphatic statements of in- tention to commit suicide by the patient made to his cousins on 12 January and to the complainant on 13 January were reported at the ward round on 17 January, and, if so, why the staff still persisted with the discharge. 12. The AHA, basing their reply to me on this complaint on information provided by the consultant, said that there were ‘reports in the notes con- cerning comments made by [the complainant] about [his brother’s] be- haviour ’. The consultant told my officers that the information he had pro- vided related to earlier entries in the medical records and that he had not been aware of any reports made by the cousins or the complainant on 12 and 13 January. He further said that the decision to discharge the patient was taken at the weekly ward round meeting on 9 January, attended by the available doctors and ward staff. If reports of suicide threats had subsequently been received, he would expect them to have been recorded and they would have been considered at the next ward round meeting on 16 January when the discharge was confirmed for 18 January. The consultant said that he had taken the decision to discharge the complainant’s brother and treat him as an out-patient. 13. The registrar told my officers that he had spoken to the complainant and his brother together on the patient’s return from Christmas leave and the complainant had told him of his brother’s threats to his life. He had asked the brother if he wanted to commit suicide and the brother had denied it. He said that other reports made by the complainant of his brother’s threats to him and the nursing staff had been discussed at the weekly ward round meetings; it was ‘ridiculous’ to think that they would have been omitted and therefore the consultant would have been aware of them. The registrar said that he was on leave from 4-21 January and had not therefore been present at the ward round meetings of 9 January when the decision to discharge the patient was taken and 16 January when it was confirmed.