Summary
C complained that they were provided with inadequate pain relief following surgery. C has chronic pain and as such required more careful management of pain relief due to their high tolerance of opioids. The board considered that they had appropriately assessed and managed C's pain.
We took independent advice from a consultant anaesthetist. We found that while the postoperative pain relief provided was appropriate, there was a lack of true multi-modal analgesia (pain management which combines various groups of medications for pain relief) intra-operatively (during surgery) which increased the chances of immediate pain control problems. We upheld the complaint and made recommendations for learning and improvement.
Recommendations
What we said should change to put things right in future: The board should reflect and specifically consider our suggestion for further learning and advise this office of what further improvements they intend making.
We have asked the organisation to provide us with evidence that they have implemented the recommendations we have made on this case by the deadline we set.
Related reading
View Decision Report 201909937 as a PDF (25.28 KB) Updated: August 18, 2021