NHS Open Door Policy

[trolly61]

Hi my 25 year old daughter passed away recently after being given bad news by a Junior nurse, she suffered a cardiac arrest. I requested a meeting with the hospital staff and have been granted one hour tomorrow. I also requested to speak with the nurse who was with my daughter, but have been told its not appropriate for her to be there with myself and the consultants as she is Junior Staff. Im angry about this as she would be the one to tell me exactly what happened. I feel they are trying to cover something up. Does anyone know if I can insist on speaking to her under the new NHS Open door policy? Thanks

[woofgang]

can you post a link to the open door policy to which you refer? as I can't find anything about it anywhere?

[bednobs]

hi i work in the NHS in patient relations and i observe 3 things
1) i have never heard of the "open door policy"
2) it is very usual not to have the person concerned meet you
3) someone has recommended legal action. For what? legal action to get a nurse to talk to you??

[trolly61]

@ Bednobs, Im not interested in blame or legal action, all I wanted was to talk to the nurse who was the last person to see my daughter alive. Blaming anyone wont bring my daughter back, but I feel that as I wasnt there that night, in order to have closure I would like to talk to her. I can imagine she will be feeling bad, maybe thats why she cant talk to me, but it wouldve been nice all the same.

[trolly61]

@woofgang, here is a link to one of them, however there seems to be something for each area Trust. Apparently it came into effect on the 17th Nov this year. It was my friends daughter who mentioned it, shes a Dr

www.surreyhealth.nhs.uk/index.php/downloads/f
inish/11/115

[redcrx]

sorry for your loss.
I think that the suggestion of writing an open letter to the nurse as a seperate entity, away from your talks and complaint with the senior staff, may be a good suggestion. If you are not looking for blame and let the nurse aware of that she may be more forthcoming with being able to tell you more of what you want to know about your daughter

[trolly61]

@redcrx I was actually thinking of doing this, so I may ask the Senior staff present at the meeting if they think this a good idea

[cathfromsaron]

btw, masks are issued to patients and NOT left in rooms, for hygiene reasons!

[trolly61]

Any time Ive ever been in that very same hospital, they have always been connected to the oxygen outlet on the wall near the bed, hanging in a plastic bag

[factor-fiction]

hi bednobs- I can't remember anyone on this thread recommending legal action. I made a reference to legal action but I certainly didn't recommend it.
I did however perceive from the comments made that the poster that she was very unhappy with the way the nurse had dealt with the incident and wanted to complain about or challenge what had happened, and I said she should go ahead with the meeting as planned and then take things from there if she wasn't happy with the answers and felt there was a cover up.

[Gavmacp]

Dear Trolly,
First and foremost I am incredibly sorry for your loss!!!!!!
As a nurse it is always a very difficult to know how to break bad news. Maybe it was not the best time but I have handed over information to colleagues only to find out later they did not inform the patient.
As to having oxygen masks to hand probably not as we do not keep everything we need to hand.
Hospitals do not nowadays try to cover things up but try to have a clear and transparant attitude to any event as there is nothing to be gained from a 'cover up'.
My only suggestion maybe to write a letter to the nurse which you can hand to the appropriate authority they can read it and pass it to the nurse if they think it is appropriate.
Death is bloody awful as a nurse and it is a thousand times worse meeting the relatives and I think this is why they are trying to protect the nurse.

[ladybirder]

It was NoMercy at 12.45 mentioned legal action.

[trolly61]

@Gavmacp Thank you, I will do this

[Gavmacp]

My Dear Trolly,
I thought I would write before I go to work.
I hope everything went well today and it went some ways to getting the answers you need.
I hope I am not been patronising but there are 5 stages to grieving which you will go through.
Anger
Denial
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
You may feel them at different times and for quite a while. When someone so young dies it just doesn't make sense and we try and work it out in our head.
Much Love,
Gavin

[Gavmacp]

Dear Trolly,
Just one thing my wife who works in cardiology said something that I never thought of. A panic attack should not lead to a cardiac arrest unless there was an underlying undiagnosed heart problem. Sometime we never really find out why something happened.

[boxtops]

I've only just seen this post, some two months after it was flagged up to me.

We provide training (yes..) on how to break bad news, and the training is aimed at senior clinicians and those who should be tasked with the breaking of seriously bad news to patients and families, how to go about it, possible responses - etc. For this to have been left to a junior nurse seems wrong to me, IMO - but nevertheless, I feel for trolly in her loss. It would be interesting to know if she had any closure by now, with the hospital staff concerned...?

Nevertheless, to return to the question - I'm not aware of any formal Open Door policy in which patients have open access to any information - lots of NHS organisations have open door arrangements whereby people can more easily discuss concerns but I can't find a single formal policy reference on Google which says that this is a right.

If this happened as trolly describes (and I don't doubt it did) then it is likely to have been noted as a Serious Untoward Incident and will have been thoroughly investigated within a tight timeline, to see what may have been wrong in the processes and what can be learned from it. It doesn't help trolly, but it might stop anything similar happening to someone else in future. IMO.