The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust

3. Miss K complains about the care and treatment she had from the Trust after the birth of her daughter in July 2022. She complains the Trust:

• did not correctly treat a tear she had during childbirth • did not appropriately treat her post-partum (the time after childbirth) blood loss.

4. Miss K says because of a lack of treatment for her tear, she has ongoing pain and discomfort. She also says because her blood loss was not treated, she now has anaemia (not enough iron in your body) and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS is a condition of cysts on the ovaries).

5. Miss K wants a financial payment and an apology.

7. 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 Miss K 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.

8. Miss K could make a clinical negligence claim to get the financial payment she wants for the poor treatment she complains about.

9. Miss K could not give a figure for how much money she wants. She did say she was looking for as much as possible, as the events had a huge impact on her ongoing health. We discussed our approach to financial payments with Miss K. She said that what we might recommend if we were to uphold her complaint was not very much.

10. We know the legal route is often able to recommend a larger payment than we can. This suggests the legal route might be more suitable for Miss K.

11. We know Miss K also wants an apology as an outcome. Legal action might not directly achieve this but we understand Miss K is focused on achieving the maximum payment possible, so legal action might be the best option for her.

12. We asked Miss K if she had already taken any legal advice and she told us she was waiting to hear back from a solicitor.

13. We discussed any barriers Miss K has to taking legal action. She told us about cost being a possible barrier. Miss K could find a ‘no win-no fee’ solicitor. She has not told us about any other barriers and the fact she is actively exploring legal action suggests there are none.

14. If she finds she cannot take legal action or there are outcomes that the court cannot achieve, then she can return to us for further consideration.

15. If Miss K does return to us, we would need to carefully consider the outcome of any legal enquiries, the outcomes she is looking for and our time limit for accepting complaints. The law says complaints should be brought to us within one year of when the complainant became aware of a problem.

16. We understand Miss K’s experience has caused distress and had a big impact on her everyday life. We hope this statement clearly explains our reasons for not considering her complaint further at this time.

1. We have carefully considered Miss K’s complaint about the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (the Trust). We are sorry to hear about the impact this experience has had on her and the difficulties she has faced since.

2. Miss K could take legal action on the matter she has brought to us. For this reason, we have decided not to consider her complaint further. We explain our decision in this statement.