Lilibeth Ooms 45 years old - NHS Error?

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You can read the full story of how Lilibeth Ooms died due to a NHS Hospital error - Her Widower has created a dedicated website!

Lilibeth Ooms died on her wedding anniversary. Her widower Jan Ooms tells his NHS error or should that be horror story?

In my wife's case, apart from the DNAR (I had, 10 days before, written to the consultant nephrologist at Raigmore NHS Hospital, on my wife's behalf to make it known that she wanted all treatment considered and that she was not considering death as an option) she was not given heart consultation or ECG for low BP and J.V.D. etc. Her heart stopped during dialysis and the DNAR was implemented (I was not there). The post-morten identified pericarditis as primary cause of death.

My view is that she presented with the typical symptoms of pericarditis but they had already decided it was a case of futile care and did not bother with further investigations to any new complications or symptoms.

I cannot prove this since no doctor is going to write futile care or similar in a patient's medical notes but as far as I am concerned the onus is on them to prove otherwise. I think the term is involuntary euthanasia.

The ombudsman dismissed this suggestion on the grounds that she was receiving dialysis, TPN, wound treatment, antibiotics, etc and her treatment was, therefore, actively continuing. However, there are many ways of euthanasing and all it takes is the removal of one medication, one treatment or an investigation, even if the patient is being actively treated for other conditions, to make it euthanasia. The common methods that we hear about are: increasing morphine to counter pain, withdrawing liquids.

The Ombudsman diluted the DNAR error to one of paper work ("failed to manage the DNAR properly"). It does not elaborate where the failure was. The Ombudsman does not mention that neither my wife nor I were consulted about the DNAR.

This is another example of the Ombudsman undertaking damage limitation and providing the illusion (to others) that it has dealt with that aspect of the complaint. It must spend a lot of time writing very carefully worded reports which give the impression that the complaint has been investigated but at the same time avoid actually saying anything that is meaningful.

Click here to read THE Inverness Courier article about how Mr. Jan Ooms says questions remain over his wife's death!

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