High dependency care beds needed'

A WOMAN claims her 82-year-old mother died alone because there was no intensive care bed available for her at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital. Liz Fisher now wants to raise awareness of the need for 'high dependency' beds. These offer close monitoring, but not as much as required by intensive care patients. There is none available at the PEH - although the Board of Health is submitting plans to the States for a new ICU ward that will include three high dependency beds. Tessa Morgan died in March last year just days after being transferred from the intensive care unit to a medical ward. She had been suffering from heart failure. Mrs Fisher said she and her elderly father, Tim, wanted doctors to allow her mother back to ICU, but they were told her place had been filled by another patient. 'The doctors said she could not go back to ICU because it was busy and she had had her chance,' said Mrs Fisher. Instead, she was placed on Brock ward. The family believed the move meant that Mrs Morgan was on the mend. 'We thought she was well enough to come off the ventilator.' Mrs Fisher's two sisters, Trisha and Judy, returned to their homes in America and Australia. But a week later, Mrs Morgan died. Mrs Fisher said it was left to another elderly patient to alert nurses to her mother's final breathing problems. She said: 'They tried to resuscitate her a few times, but it was too late. 'The ward was understaffed - the nurses were too busy. 'But I feel if she had been moved to a different ward and into a high dependency bed and had a lot of care, then if she had passed away, we would have felt that they had really tried to keep her going.' Mrs Fisher said: 'If we thought she was going to die, then my sisters would not have returned home.' She believed the nurses did their best but did not have time to care for her mother. 'I don't think she was watched enough and she died in isolation without close monitoring. 'I think the cut-off was too dramatic and she should have been weaned off intensive care more slowly.' Mrs Fisher is not lodging a complaint against the hospital but wanted to use her mother's case as an example of the need for high dependency beds. She was too upset to talk until now, but was moved to speak out following an article in the Guernsey Press this March highlighting an ICU beds shortage that had led to cancelled operations. 'It is being done in her memory and to raise awareness of the need for a high dependency ward.' But she was unhappy with the words of one specialist who told her that she should 'prepare for the worst because your mother's heart has been beating for 82 years'. 'My mother was an incredibly young 82 and full of life. Two weeks before, she was playing Scrabble with the family and kept us laughing. Just before she was taken into hospital, she had been shopping and had had her hair done. 'I thought it was a terrible thing to say.' Mrs Fisher said her mother's death had been 'absolutely shocking and totally unexpected'. 'I would like to know if there are other cases - the public needs to know there is a need for an in-between ward with high dependency beds.' *A Board of Health spokesman said: 'The board does not wish to comment on this particular case, but officers of the board have met Mrs Fisher to discuss her specific concerns.' Plans to develop the ICU/HDU bed capacity at the PEH will be going to the States later this year as part of the fourth theatre development. 'Specifically, the development will provide four intensive care and three high dependency beds. 'In addition, as part of the plans to provide new medical wards, a two-bedded coronary care/high dependency unit will be created.' *In March, it was revealed that up to 10 operations - including some for cancer and heart disease - had been cancelled in February because of an acute shortage. Consultant surgeon Roger Allsopp said then that although no one had died as a result of the crisis, 'there is a potential for lives to be put at risk'.