Distress of miscarriage was made more upsetting

What happened

Mrs E was in the early stages of pregnancy when she had some bleeding. She had two scans at the Trust in four days, and staff recorded that she had a threatened miscarriage. Soon after, she passed some tissue that she thought might have been a foetus, and she returned to the Trust.

Trust staff put the tissue in a box and took it away for examination. Staff did not tell Mrs E why they had taken the box. The Trust analysed the tissue and told Mrs E it was tissue associated with a pregnancy, but was not foetal tissue. Mrs E had a scan the following month that showed she had had a complete miscarriage.

Mrs E complained that Trust staff had taken the box without her permission. The Trust said that if it had found foetal tissue, it would have sent this to the mortuary or pathology laboratory, for which it would have got consent. Mrs E was dissatisfied and confused by the complaints process and came to us.

What we found

We partly upheld this complaint. Record keeping was poor. There was no printed record of the findings of one of the scans because it was performed using a portable scanner, so the Trust's response to Mrs E's complaint was not as complete as it could have been. We sought advice from one of our clinical advisers, who felt that the Trust was mistaken in its explanation of the tissue Mrs E gave staff.

Putting it right

The Trust apologised that its response was not as thorough as it should have been because a printed report of the scan result was not available. It also apologised for the inaccuracy regarding the contents of the labelled box.