On Hot Coals

A&E ward today. The night staff had an awful time, were supposed to finish at 8am and didn't end up going until about 9:30 this morning. Here is why...

A gentleman entered A&E in the early hours of this morning because he was vomiting blood (haematemesis). This is something we see pretty much every day. He was stable in majors, and was awaiting a bed on a medical ward. He was sent to the A&E ward sometime around 5am, where he could wait to go upstairs so that he didn't breach the 4 hour target. All was ok, obs looked fine, just waiting to get onto that medical ward. A short time later he sufferered a massive gastro-intestinal bleed and started to vomit copious amounts of blood. He was very quickly wheeled down to resus where he received a blood transfusion. The bay back on the A&E ward could only be described as a blood bath, according to my colleagues.

So there he is, in resus, and the doctors decide he is to go up to the medical ward he had been waiting for. He was to have an endoscopy shortly after, and more than likely go to theatre to stop the GI bleed. Apparently he had recovered fairly well from his episode and they staff felt he was safe to be moved. He was stabilised in resus, and moved up to the ward. The nurse handed him over and he was put into his bed. He died 10 minutes later.

The night staff stayed on to make sure their backs were covered, documenting anything that wasn't documented, finding missing notes, ECGs and obs charts. A scary time, but then it wasn't their decision to get him up to the ward rather than straight to theatre for endoscopy...

This is going to be looked into very closely, I can only hope that our staff are able to justify their actions. Jen* told me, 'The last thing I said to him was 'Don't worry - you'll be alright'. God how awful is that?'

It is awful and tragic, but unfortunately his time was up.