OAP sent home from hospital with broken leg

8:08am Monday 11th February 2008

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HOSPITAL bosses have given new instructions to doctors and nurses after an elderly woman was discharged with a broken leg.

Mary Churchman was 95 when she fell at a care home.

She was taken to the Royal Bolton Hospital but staff only X-rayed her hip and failed to pick up that she had a badly broken thighbone and shattered kneecap.

Mrs Churchman, from Little Lever, was discharged and taken back to the Thicketford House intermediate care home in Thicketford Road, Tonge Moor.

She spent the next four days in agony before a physiotherapist eventually said she needed to be taken back to hospital.

A second X-ray revealed the broken leg.

Mrs Churchman had suffered internal bleeding as a result of the break, meaning she had to wait a week for an operation to repair her leg with pins.

Her family launched a legal fight for compensation from the hospital, which ceased when Mrs Churchman died, aged 96, last October.

Relatives say she was a "shadow of her former self" after the incident and believe she would have lived longer had it not been for what happened.

The hospital has since apologised to the family and managers say staff are now told to examine the whole leg in similar cases.

Heather Edwards, head of communications at Royal Bolton Hospital, said she accepted that further examinations should have taken place.

"We would like to repeat our apologies to the family of Mrs Churchman for what happened at the hospital.

"We have explained to the family that the importance of examining the whole leg before confirming a diagnosis is now stressed in our teaching programme for doctors and nurses in A&E."

Mrs Churchman suffered the fall in July, 2006, when she was the care home convalescing after treatment for cellulitis.

Following her operation after the broken leg was discovered, she remained an inpatient until October, 2006.

During her time in hospital, she contracted the superbugs MRSA and Clostridium Difficile.

After being discharged, she spent two months in another intermediate care home before returning to her semi-detached home in Hereford Crescent, Little Lever.

Her family have decided to make her case public after their legal action against the hospital ceased.

A relative said: "She was a pretty fit woman for her age. She was bright, mobile and articulate, and this just ruined her life.

"She was a shadow of her former self after the operation and never got over the trauma she went through. It was so hard for us as a family.

"At no point did anyone examine her leg properly. She had a nasty fall and should have been given a full top-to-toe examination."

Mrs Churchman had previously been an active member of the community, attending pensioners' lunches and regularly attending mass at St Teresa's Church, Little Lever.

But after the operation on her leg, she was virtually housebound and required four visits per day from a health visitor.

Her family said she was given vital support from friends at church, who also visited regularly.

"She was such a dignified woman and this completely destroyed her," the relative added.