A 27-YEAR-OLD woman collapsed from a brain haemorrhage and later died after she had an abortion at Barnsley Hospital.

The woman had an ‘uncomplicated’ procedure at the hospital and was discharged later that day. But she collapsed at home four days later and was taken to Sheffield Northern General.

She died after being taken off ventilation on September 12 last year.

The incident is currently under investigation.

It is one of 34 serious incidents which took place between April and September last year and are listed in a report by Barnsley Hospital.

In a separate incident, a tumour was found on the lung of a patient who was not checked for lung cancer despite recommendations from a CT scan. Despite high suspicions it was cancerous, the patient declined further investigations and the matter was ‘de-logged’ as a serious incident.

Another patient developed hospital-acquired MRSA, though the cause could not be identified.

There was a four-year delay in diagnosis for one patient, whose CT scan from 2013 was reported as normal, when in fact it showed an abnormal liver lesion which had not been reported. A separate patient had urgent treatment for an infection in Leeds after an abnormal finding on a scan was not acted on.

The report stated more needed to be done to make sure findings from investigations were acted upon.

One patient was admitted to A and E and transferred to the acute medical unit without up-to-date observations. The patient suffered a cardiac arrest when they arrived at AMU.

Throughout the six month period, five patients suffered hospital-acquired pressure ulcers, and five patients suffered blood clots. An investigation concluded that one incident was not a hospital-acquired blood clot.

The report said there had been ‘significant improvement’ in the uptake of risk assessments in relation to blood clots, and investigations concluded the root cause of the incidents related to the failure to prescribe or prescribe the correct dosage of treatment. The hospital’s policy has been reviewed by the Thromboprophylaxis Committee regarding anomalies in dosages.

In addition, nine patients suffered falls, with one suffering a severe head injury and others suffering injuries to the chest, shoulder, hip and thighbones.

The report states assessments are not being completed in line with the hospital’s falls prevention policy, and there are gaps in adhering to assessment completion. The falls group is undertaking a review of the falls risk assessment, and a new process to identify avoidable and unavoidable falls has been introduced.

The hospital failed to meet the national waiting time of patients being seen within four hours in A and E on August 5 due to excessive demand, and in April, there were four breaches of the 52 week referrals in the ophthalmology service.

Heather McNair, director of nursing, said: “Barnsley Hospital recognises the importance of reporting incidents as a fundamental way to learn and improve patient safety. We have a transparent process where all staff can log incidents, whether they have resulted in harm or not.

“We place a significant focus on patient safety and continual learning and improvement is a vital part of the process of investigating serious incidents.

“Every six months there is thematic review reported to the trust board as part of our transparency on learning from incidents which have occurred.”