Please pay attention to this thread.
@ColchesterNHS @ESNEFT
On Friday at 1am my Dad attempted suicide by overdosing on paracetamol. This was his third attempt. He is a paranoid schizophrenic who was sectioned at in 2010 and 2014 after attempts on his life. On Friday he was
@ColchesterNHS @ESNEFT
On Friday at 1am my Dad attempted suicide by overdosing on paracetamol. This was his third attempt. He is a paranoid schizophrenic who was sectioned at in 2010 and 2014 after attempts on his life. On Friday he was
found alive by my Mum at 9am who called 999 and told them he had taken 96 tablets. After 40 minutes 999 called my Mum to say they were going to prioritise another patient and would attend when they could. Over an hour after my Mum called 999 an ambulance finally arrived.
The hospital is a 15 minute drive away. The paramedics determined by counting the empty paracetamol boxes that he had actually taken 138 tablets. They took him to @ColchesterNHS where he was put in the Emergency Assessment Unit. My Mum, who didn’t go with him in the
ambulance, received no calls about his state throughout the day. Only after calling loads of different places for hours did we find out that he had actually been moved to the Medical Day Unit, a non-secure ward where he was free to walk around without support or being watched.
To combat the high levels of paracetamol in his body - which could shut down his liver if untreated - he was placed on a drip of paracetamol antidote NAC. This was after his stomach had been pumped. NICE guidelines state you must start a patient on NAC as soon as possible. There
are three bags - one for one hour, one for four hours and one for 16 hours. We calculated that he started his treatment at roughly 5pm on Friday, seven hours after he had been admitted to hospital. With a paracetamol overdose time is against you. We left at 1.15 and were told he
was going to have the psychiatric assessment he desperately needed with the mental health crisis team at 5pm after his blood results had come back. We received a call at 4.40pm to ask if Dad had come home. We asked why. We were told he wasn’t on the ward anymore. The hospital
said they would keep looking. We received another call at 5.20 to tell us that he was officially missing. He had been allowed to leave the ward because he was not being monitored, despite being admitted due to the third attempt on his own life. He was vulnerable but the nurses
said he “seemed fine”. He walked straight out through the front doors. We were called by the hospital to say he had been found “at the railway”. I assumed that meant he had been trying to get home, where he felt safe. But it was later clarified that he was found on the tracks in
front of a moving train. It took a police officer to tell us the truth and when I asked why we hadn’t been told the nurse said she hadn’t wanted to upset us. My Dad was paranoid and in a very bad state when he returned to hospital. The hospital offered an apology but because the
mental health unit is a separate trust, all they had was a handwritten note on the second page of his emergency admission notes that he was a paranoid schizophrenic. The mental health unit was not asked for the history of his mental health and so he wasn’t deemed a priority or a
risk, despite being admitted because of a suicide attempt. When he returned to hospital he was sectioned by the police for 24 hours who sat with him. A blood test showed his liver function had significantly decreased and that he still had high levels of paracetamol in his blood.
He was put on more NAC, but only 19 hours after he had returned to hospital. He wasn’t able to have a psychiatric assessment because the mental health unit say they cannot assess a patient until they are medically fit. That means the sectioning ran out at 6pm, the police left
before that and the hospital were unable or unwilling to provide extra support for us to make sure he didn’t abscond again. I was told by the Sister of the ward that this was definitely a possibility but due to staffing shortages there was nothing they could do to stop it. After
talking to everyone I could find on the ward the site manager at @ColchesterNHS promised to provide private security to sit with my Dad overnight, so we could get some sleep and so he couldn’t abscond again. We knew he would try to go again because he was scared.
The security never turned up and my brother, who suffers from cerebral palsy, stayed with my Dad overnight. He is still there this morning. He has still not had a psychiatric assessment and is likely to be deemed medically fit today. He is talking about going home. I am worried
that without a psychiatric assessment before he is discharged by the ward he will be able to leave because he is medically fit. This is not what needs to happen but no departments at @ColchesterNHS talk to each other. It is only because of our persistence yesterday that he
received results, was given food (the doctor forgot to tell nurses he was no longer nil by mouth) and was going to have someone sit with him, as we were promised, to make sure he didn’t abscond. That never happened and I am worried that his psychiatric assessment will come too
late or never. He will be allowed to leave and return, vulnerable, just days after two attempts on his own life and with no support because he isn’t a priority. Well he is a priority and something needs to happen so that he is safe from himself.
