A worried family claim health bosses “put our mother into a petri dish” while she fights an infection they say she caught in Kirkcaldy’s Victoria Hospital.
The family do not wish to be named but wanted to ensure their concerns are raised, given the serious cleanliness failings revealed in a recent inspection.
The pensioner was admitted to ward 10 of the under-fire hospital last week for a standard knee replacement operation.
Only hours after surgery she was sitting up and, according to one of her sons, “looking surprisingly well”.
The following afternoon she was walking with assistance and everyone was looking forward to her returning home within days.
But then, he said, things started to go wrong and the worried family had to rely on information gleaned from other patients on the ward.
In the early hours of last Monday the pensioner was “wheezing and struggling for breath in extreme distress”.
He said she had pressed the nurse call button three times or more but got no response.
Another patient saw this and also pressed her button, without response.
Her son said the other patient, who was “still struggling herself” got out of her bed and made it part of the way along the corridor to raise the alarm.
“The nurse casually made her way to my mother’s bed where she obviously realised the gravity of the situation and a crash team including an A&E consultant was rushed to my mother. Her blood pressure was life-threateningly low.
“The treatment for my mother included several bags of blood, saline fluids and a cocktail of intravenous antibiotics.”
Patients said the team tried for the next five or six hours to stabilise her. But despite the severity of the situation, no members of the family were contacted during or after the crisis.
Instead, when his brother called the following morning, he was told she had had a “restless night” and had an infection they were treating as a priority.
Once the story emerged from other patients, the family asked staff to explain exactly what had happened during the night.
The family said: “He (a son) had naively thought that the nurse would give him more information and allow him to speak to the senior doctor on the ward. Instead he was given a very surprised look as the nurse exclaimed ‘how did you find out about that?’.”
They said feel they have been struggling to get answers and that “it is all being brushed under the carpet”.
They are also angry because they believe staff knew there had been “quite a few” infections, and another patient in a sideroom had an infection at that time.
Due to that, their mother is enduring a prolonged stay in hospital with her knee “now a very low-down, second priority”.
The concerned children also claimed that their mother has been left in a urine-soaked nightdress.
The family were worried that speaking out might make the situation worse, but her son added: “Someone could and will die”.
NHS Fife’s interim director of acute services, Professor Scott McLean, told The Courier: “We are very concerned to hear this story.
“For a variety of reasons, we are unable to comment on this individual case.
“I would like to reassure the patient, their family and the public that raising concerns does not affect the care and treatment they will receive.
“We want to know of any issues so that we can endeavour to solve their concerns.”