Investigation reports

We found that although a cancer patient’s treatment plan was in line with relevant standards, the Altnagelvin Hospital failed to keep proper records relating to her care, including losing a number of key medical documents.  We also asked it to apologise to the patient’s daughter over the way it responded to queries about her mother’s care.

A man complained that his mother was diagnosed incorrectly by the Southern Trust and prescribed her a drug that led to her becoming confused and agitated.  We found that the overall care of the patient was excellent, but partly upheld the man’s claims that the Trust didn’t deal properly with his complaint.

We investigated a complaint that the Belfast Trust failed to identify and treat a physical cause for a patient's symptoms which developed after surgery to remove her thyroid.

A complainant believed that the surgery she received in Craigavon Area Hospital caused her injury and led to ongoing symptoms which were not properly treated.

A complainant raised concerns about the Trust removing her diagnosis of PTSD.  We found that the Trust’s actions were appropriate.

We asked the Western Health and Social Care Trust to use the newly appointed Learning Disability Liaison Nurse to ensure that appropriate training is provided to staff who care for patients with disabilities. We also recommended it develop an online information resource for staff to help them care for other vulnerable adults.

We found a number of failures in our investigation into the Trust's care of a nursing home patient.

The Chief Executives of three health trusts have apologised after an error in recording a patient’s date of birth led to him being confused with another patient.

Our investigation into a complaint about the Southern Health and Social Care Trust found that it did not consider all of the available information when making a child’s autism diagnosis.  We asked it to apologise to the child and her mother after appropriate intervention and support only became available following a correct diagnosis over two years later.