Disabled woman discharged from hospital with fractures - inquest

A disabled woman who died days after she was dropped by care home workers was discharged from hospital on the day of her fall with rib and arm fractures.

An inquest heard Lyn Parker fractured her ribs and both arms at a care home in Hampton, south-west London, when she fell 1.5m as care workers tried to lift her from her wheelchair to her bed.

Ms Parker, 64, was on the floor for more than three hours before an ambulance arrived on 15 January.

She died 10 days later.

Ms Parker, who was non-verbal, was discharged in the early hours of 16 January but had to be taken back in the morning after a care home worker found her left arm was "swollen and black".

A consultant at the hospital told the court on Tuesday that the main cause of Ms Parker's death was "aspiration pneumonia".

Dr Sumit Dutta, a consultant in emergency medicine at Kingston Hospital, treated Ms Parker on 15 January.

Jurors heard from his statement that Ms Parker was "combative" to his attempts to examine her and that he treated her for the fracture to her right arm and what he believed to be a reaction to morphine that paramedics had administered.

In a second statement, he added: "In hindsight I should have arranged a pan trauma CT scan.

"At the time I believed the identified injuries accounted for her symptoms.

"I should have had a lower threshold to widen the net of examination."

Dr Dutta said that if the scan had been ordered Ms Parker would not have been discharged on that day.

Dr Khalid Mohammed Ali, a fellow consultant in emergency medicine at the hospital, co-led an internal investigation into Ms Parker's care.

His report, read out in court, detailed "a missed diagnosis of fractured ribs and a left humeral fracture" on Ms Parker's first presentation to hospital.

However, he added that he did not think "earlier recognition" would have changed the final outcome because Ms Parker was an "extremely frail and vulnerable adult" with "multiple co-morbid conditions" and "extremely limited physiological reserve".

Giving evidence on Tuesday, the doctor said a full trauma CT scan, done on 16 January when Ms Parker returned to hospital, showed "multiple rib fractures on the right side" and doctors found a "fracture in her left humerus of the left arm".

He said it was not discovered during her first presentation to hospital because there had been no swelling and the non-verbal Ms Parker could not say she was in pain.

"If a patient cannot verbalise and tell you that there is a pain there you might miss it," he added. "That is why on the first presentation there was no X-ray done on the left arm."

The inquest continues.

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