A medical practice in the Havering area

2. Mrs E complains her husband, Mr E, was not added to the palliative care register at the Practice as he should have been, after an appointment with a respiratory consultant on 10 September 2020. She says this meant he did not get the needed pain management, oxygen, steroids, and palliative care visits he should have.

3. Mrs E says as a result, Mr E was in constant pain and fighting to breathe, lost all dignity and could do nothing for himself. She says she had to install a stairlift and buy mobility aids at a cost to her. She believes Mr E’s life was shortened because he did not get palliative care, as he just gave up and stopped fighting. Mrs E also says her daughter had to do CPR on Mr E, which she would not have needed to do if he had been on the palliative care register. Mrs E says her daughter still has nightmares about this.

4. Mrs E is looking for the GP to be disciplined and to get compensation for the loss of Mr E.

5. Mr E was diagnosed with asbestosis (a serious lung condition caused by long-term exposure to asbestos) in about 1998 and he first joined the Practice in 2017. At this time he had already been diagnosed with interstitial lung disease (a group of conditions that cause scarring in your lungs).

6. On 3 January 2020, Mr E had a chest X-ray which showed chronic changes and asbestos exposure, so he was referred back to the respiratory team. Mr E was seen by a respiratory consultant on 3 July and again on 10 September. At this second appointment, the consultant noted the management of Mr E’s condition would now be mostly palliative.

7. Mr E sadly passed away in January 2021. Mrs E only became aware that Mr E should have been added to the palliative care register after the coroner's investigation in October 2021. She made a complaint after this.

9. The law says we cannot investigate a complaint where a person has (or had) the option to take legal action, unless we consider this is (or was) unreasonable in the circumstances. We have discussed this with Mrs E to understand her circumstances and the outcomes she wants. We do not consider whether legal action would succeed but whether it would be a reasonable option to look into.

10. Part of the impact that Mrs E explains is that Mr E was in constant pain and fighting to breathe, lost all dignity and could do nothing for himself. While she believes the Practice’s actions shortened his life, she is not claiming that he would not have died had he been treated correctly. A claim for clinical negligence can be made by the executor of the deceased’s estate for the deceased’s pain and suffering leading up to their death.

11. Mrs E knows that neither our organisation or the courts can look into disciplinary action for individual doctors. She told us she is going to pursue this with the General Medical Council.

12. Mrs E was not sure how much compensation she wanted when she first raised the complaint. When given time to think about this, she advised she still did not have a figure in mind but felt the complaint came under level six of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s severity of injustice scale. Level six is for financial compensation of £10,000 or more.

13. Having considered the impact described by Mrs E, we think the complaint would more likely sit at either level four or level five on our scale. As such, Mrs E may not be satisfied by the amount of compensation that we would be able to achieve, even if we were to investigate and uphold her complaint through our process.

14. Mrs E explained she had taken some legal advice but was made to feel like the solicitors were just looking for how much money they could make through the claim, and that they had no interest in getting her justice. Mrs E told us that other than that, she had no barriers that would prevent her from pursuing legal action.

15. While we appreciate Mrs E’s concerns about the intentions of the solicitors she has spoken to so far, we do not consider that this is enough to say it would be unreasonable for her to continue taking legal action to resolve her complaint.

1. We have carefully considered Mrs E’s complaint about a medical practice in the Havering area (the Practice). We consider Mrs E could take legal action on the complaint she has brought to us.