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Prisoner ‘denied’ vital medication in days before death
Inquest hears of apparent failings at Pentonville
PENTONVILLE authorities ignored instructions from Whittington Hospital by returning a prisoner who was awaiting an operation to his cell and denying him his medication in his last days alive, an inquest has heard.
Instructions that Warren Robert Lawrence be held at the Victorian gaol’s hospital wing were ignored and a crucial appointment for surgery was missed before the 37-year-old suffered a second collapsed lung in his cell.
He died in hospital from a stroke following surgery on his chest.
At St Pancras Coroner’s Court yesterday (Thursday), Pentonville healthcare manager John Attard admitted: “At that time we had one or two members of staff who were not cutting it in my opinion.”
Over three days, the inquest jury has heard that Mr Lawrence was rushed from prison to the Whittington and successfully treated for pneumothorax – a collapsed lung – on January 24, 2005.
Chest experts recommended an operation but until a bed became available, Mr Lawrence was discharged back to Pentonville with instructions that he be monitored in the hospital wing.
Surgeons at the Heart Hospital, part of UCH, tried to contact the Whittington on the day Mr Lawrence was discharged to tell them they had a bed for his vital operation.
But Mr Lawrence, who had begged warders not to send him to the prison hospital because it was full of mental health patients, ended up in D- wing and knew nothing of the operation appointment.
There he suffered a second pneumothorax four days later and was returned to the Whittington before being sent for an urgent operation at the London Chest
Hospital.
He was operated on but entered a coma hours later and died on March 2, 2005.
His mother, Maureen Lawrence, from Holloway, said she had visited him in prison on February 8 and informed the authorities that he was unwell and not receiving medication.
She said: “I said my problem is with my son – he’s just come out of hospital, he’s waiting for an operation and he’s not getting medication.”
Mr Lawrence’s partner, Pamela Fredericks, also visited him in prison the day before he collapsed for a second time.
She said the dressing on the wound left by doctors who had reinflated his lung was dirty.
“He looked really ill – he wasn’t talkative,” she added. “I asked him why his wound was so sore. He said they hadn’t been changing his dressing, they’d just been putting patches over patches.
“It was like yellow pus, like infection.”
The inquest heard from the prison’s medical staff who said nurses on D-wing treated 80 to 100 prisoners each morning in an hour and a half.
But Whittington Hospital chest consultant Dr Norman Johnson said that though he had specifically discharged Mr Lawrence to the prison hospital, patients with Mr Lawrence’s condition would not normally need special medical care if they were non-prisoners.
He said of the operation: “I have to say that I was amazed that he had died. The mortality [rate for the operation] in younger patients is low – in the order of 1 per cent or less.”
The inquest continues. |
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