Mr L went into urinary retention after a biopsy procedure. He called an ambulance and was taken to A&E. He complained about various aspects of the care he received from the ambulance service and the hospital.
What happened
Mr L had a biopsy procedure at the hospital. After he was discharged he experienced the common complication of urinary retention and so called an ambulance. Mr L was not happy with the attitude of the ambulance staff. He also said that he could have been offered pain relief sooner and that he had walked to and from the ambulance unaided.
When he arrived at hospital, Mr L said that there was a delay in the hospital carrying out the catheterisation he needed to relieve his condition. He also said that he was not offered a drink in A&E, staff did not wear gloves when they took blood samples, and that the attitude of an A&E nurse was poor.
What we found
Pain relief was offered seven minutes into the ambulance journey, and we thought that this could have been offered slightly sooner. Although this was a shortcoming, we did not consider that this minor delay was serious enough for us to uphold the complaint. There was no evidence that the ambulance service did anything else wrong, and its response to the complaint was reasonable.
There was no evidence of poor care on the part of the hospital, although the hospital's records of the catheterisation were incomplete. We did not uphold the complaint because, even though the records were incomplete, it was clear that staff carried out the procedure in reasonable time.
Parts of Mr L's complaint were about interactions with staff and there was not any evidence of what had happened, particularly where Mr L was concerned about staff attitude. We explained to Mr L that we would not be able to say whether anything had gone wrong, but we thought that both organisations had provided reasonable responses to these parts of the complaint and had apologised for any distress Mr L felt.
Putting it right
We noted areas where each organisation could have done slightly better, but we did not think that these minor shortcomings were serious enough to uphold the complaint.
However, we highlighted these issues so that the organisations could take them forward as learning points.
East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust
East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust
Came to an unsound decision
Did not apologise properly or do enough to put things right
Not applicable