A south London mum died of a severe stroke after an ambulance call-out was mistakenly flagged as a double-booking and cancelled, a court has heard.<\/p>\n
Pauline Austin, 71, from Tooting, was left waiting hours for an ambulance that she and her carers didn\u2019t know had been cancelled.<\/p>\n
Eventually, she lost conscious and staff at her east London care home \u2013 which she had moved into just months earlier \u2013 dialled 999 a second time.<\/p>\n
But by the time she arrived at Whipps Cross Hospital \u2013 around eight hours after the initial 999 call \u2013 she had suffered a bleed on the brain so \u201ccatastrophic\u201d that a stroke expert said it was \u201cnot compatible with survival\u201d.<\/p>\n
Born in British Guyana, Mrs Austin worked for 21 years as a Bank of England administrator and also had jobs in the civil service and at Bank of America.<\/p>\n
She was \u201cfunny, generous and always cared about how others viewed her,\u201d her daughter Rebecca told an inquest at East London Coroner\u2019s Court, Walthamstow.<\/p>\n
But after being made redundant from Bank of America, her mental health deteriorated. She became \u201creclusive\u201d and \u201cwould create conspiracies in her head, hear music and voices that weren\u2019t present\u201d.<\/p>\n
Hip operations at Blackheath and Lewisham hospitals left her with mobility problems, the court was told, and in 2021 she was diagnosed with dementia.<\/p>\n
In December 2023, Mrs Austin moved to Harts House care home in Harts Grove, Woodford Green, to be near Rebecca.<\/p>\n
In March 2024, Rebecca and her partner went on a week\u2019s holiday and returned to find Mrs Austin in a worse condition than when they left, she said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Mrs Austin\u2019s \u201cspeech had got worse\u201d. She \u201ccouldn\u2019t follow sentences\u201d, had developed a\u00a0tremor leaving her unable to grip objects or feed herself.<\/p>\n
On April 18, she began vomiting, which continued throughout April 19.<\/p>\n
Staff dialled 999 to request an ambulance at 4.52pm, but none were available.<\/p>\n
The London Ambulance Service (LAS) said the wait for an ambulance was around two hours.<\/p>\n
But, in what coroner Dr Shirley Radcliffe called \u201calmost an unbelievable coincidence\u201d, the care home had also recently called an ambulance for another elderly resident on a different story of the building.<\/p>\n
A member of LAS staff noticed two calls to the same address\u00a0and wrongly assumed it was a \u201cduplicate\u201d, so cancelled one \u2013 which turned out to have been the one for Mrs Austin.<\/p>\n
But testifying on behalf of London Ambulance Service, head of quality assurance control services Sue Watkins told the court the decision to send an ambulance in the first place had been an error.<\/p>\n
She said Mrs Austin\u2019s symptoms at that time \u2013 nausea and high blood pressure \u2013 would likely have resulted in a referral to NHS 111 for advice, and an ambulance was only requested because the call handler mistakenly thought the care home worker was a visiting medical professional.<\/p>\n
Around five hours later, Mrs Austin was found unconscious with \u201cfixed and dilated\u201d pupils.<\/p>\n
By the time she reached hospital, stroke expert Dr Robert Simister said, there was \u201cno reversible treatment\u201d.<\/p>\n
But her symptoms as the day unfolded had been \u201cconsistent with a developing intracranial haemorrhage\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n
Had Mrs Austin been treated sooner, said Dr Radcliffe, her death \u201cmay have been avoided\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we can\u2019t say, on the balance of probabilities, it would have been avoided,\u201d she added. \u201cIt was a very significant bleed that was found when she was admitted to Whipps Cross Hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n
Either way, the coroner said, the mistake which saw the original ambulance cancelled should not have happened and \u201cthere is a risk that that could happen in a case where it could make a big, significant difference\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mrs Watkins said the ambulance service had distributed guidance to all staff to check the details of possible duplicate calls before deleting one of them.<\/p>\n
She added that the service hoped to soon update its computer system to remind staff to check details before allowing them to delete calls.<\/p>\n
\u201cHumans are humans,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are errors that will occur.\u201d<\/p>\n
Attributing Mrs Austin\u2019s death to \u201cnatural causes\u201d, Dr Radcliffe gave her condolences to the family.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe clearly was very much of a loved one, having been moved to a care home so that you could visit her every day,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A south London mum died of a severe stroke after an ambulance call-out was mistakenly flagged as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[13988,13991,748,13993,13990,393,4884,257,136,13989,13986,13992,16,15,13987],"class_list":{"0":"post-21683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-ambulance-service","9":"tag-bank-of-america","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-daughter-rebecca","12":"tag-dr-shirley-radcliffe","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-london","16":"tag-london-ambulance-service","17":"tag-mrs-austin","18":"tag-pauline-austin","19":"tag-sue-watkins","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-whipps-cross-hospital"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114341405231080194","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}