Summary
Miss C complained about her labour and delivery at the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital. She said that the labour had been very difficult and that she had not been provided with sufficient pain relief. She also said that she felt the communication had not been reasonable, as she did not recall being offered general anaesthetic and she was unaware that she was going to have a forceps delivery.
During our investigation, we took independent advice from two advisers, an obstetrics adviser and an anaesthetics adviser. We found that the pain relief given to Miss C during her labour and delivery had not followed hospital guidelines, and that this possibly resulted in her having sub-standard pain relief. We found this to be unreasonable care and treatment.
We also found that whilst the record of communication was reasonable, the board had previously acknowledged that the communication was not effective and apologised for this. We upheld Miss C's complaint.
Recommendations
We recommended that the board: apologise for the failings in care and treatment identified in this investigation; feed back the findings of this investigation to relevant staff, highlighting the importance of following guidelines; feed back the findings of this investigation to relevant staff, highlighting the importance of effective communication during labour and delivery.
Related reading
View Decision Report 201507511 as a PDF (12.89 KB) Updated: March 13, 2018