Paramedic failed to take paralysed man to hospital

A paramedic has been struck off after spending only nine minutes with an 89-year-old patient who had become permanently paralysed after falling out of bed.

Raymond Byron worked for West Midlands Ambulance Service in Staffordshire and responded to the patient's emergency call while working a night shift on his own on 4 January 2018.

A tribunal heard that he lifted the patient off the floor, put him into bed, then left the scene.

The patient had sustained a displaced fracture to his neck.

The Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service panel found that he failed to act in the patient's best interest by not taking him to hospital.

The patient's daughter, a registered nurse, said Mr Byron attended the scene without a bag and took no observations of the patient.

However, when her father was later attended by a second crew of paramedics they decided to take him to hospital because he was unable to bear his own weight.

It was later discovered that he had suffered a displaced fracture of his cervical spine and remained in hospital for several months, having been permanently paralysed.

A clinical standards manager at the NHS trust told the tribunal Mr Byron should have noticed a cut to the back of the patient's head.

He said he believed Mr Byron would have only attended to the patient for six of the nine minutes at the scene, which he believed would be insufficient time to obtain relevant history or carry out adequate checks.

The manager's opinion was that it was not possible to discharge the patient in such a short amount of time and that the man should have been transferred to a hospital because of his age and the circumstances.

The tribunal confirmed there was no suggestion Mr Byron caused the patient's outcome and did not say that he should have identified the fracture.

Mr Byron did not attend the tribunal hearings, but in an interview from 2018, he said he did not complete an electronic patient record "because I had forgotten about it until I got back out in the car - I turned around, the door was shut and the porch light was off."

Mr Byron retired on grounds of ill health in 2018 and the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service imposed a 12-month suspension order in August 2023.

In August 2024, a review of the suspension order concluding that striking Mr Byron off would be appropriate, due to his disengagement with the process, having not attended the tribunal and telling the tribunal service via email: "I have no idea what you're talking about."

He had worked for the ambulance service since April 1992.

A spokesperson for the ambulance service said Mr Byron left the service before a full internal investigation could be completed.

"As a result, the trust referred the case to the HCPC," they said.

Follow BBC Stoke & Staffordshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.