West Suffolk Hospital, in Bury St Edmunds, apologises to widow from Elmswell for not communicating just how ill her husband was

A grieving widow has said her husband and his family were deprived of the chance to say a proper goodbye due to lack of communication from the hospital.

Alison Sawyer, from Elmswell, near Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, wants to share the story of her husband Craig, who died at West Suffolk Hospital on November 22, 2020, so what happened does not occur to other families in the future.

West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (WSFT), which runs West Suffolk Hospital, has offered its apologies to the family ‘for compounding their pain and heartache’ and said as a result of this case it has updated its radiology processes.

Craig was aged 36 when he died from peritonitis - an infection of the inner lining of the stomach - caused by a bowel obstruction due to pancreatic cancer.

His daughter was just three-and-half-weeks old when he passed away.

In a tearful video played to the board of WSFT, Alison spoke of Craig being admitted to West Suffolk Hospital, in Bury St Edmunds, in agonising pain late afternoon on November 21, 2020, and the impact of the lack of communication from the hospital.

Alison, who was prevented from being at the hospital due to Covid restrictions on visiting, said the family weren’t told how poorly Craig was, depriving them of the time they needed together.

Craig’s mum, who was with him, was trying to feed back to the family, but she was not given the full picture by the hospital.

Alison said they were not told at the time that Craig’s bowel had perforated - this came to light at the inquest, which the family waited three-and-a-half years for.

She said despite her husband being given end-of-life medication from 7pm she wasn’t called until 9.30pm - by her mother-in-law, not a doctor - to come in, as there was nothing the medics could do. By this point, he was heavily sedated.

Alison said: “Nobody told us what was going on. Nobody told us the severity of it. It went from ‘he’s got an infection, we are treating the infection’ to ‘you’ve got to get in because there’s nothing more we can do’. And that’s a massive leap.

“We just weren’t thought about. As a family, we weren’t thought about.

“We weren’t given the chance to say the goodbye we all needed and we all deserved to have and Craig deserved to have. We weren’t given that chance and I have got to live with that.”

Craig had been living with pancreatic cancer, which was diagnosed in October 2018, and also had cystic fibrosis, but his consultant said, while not surprised, that his death was ‘unexpected’.

What happened to Craig was classed as a ‘catastrophic acute event’.

Alison said now she knows about the perforation, she can find some acceptance in that there was nothing that could be done to save her husband, but what the CT scan revealed ‘was not investigated properly’ and not communicated with his family.

She said: “As horrible as it is, just tell people the truth so they know what is going on. We are all grown-ups. We knew Craig wasn’t ok.”

She said one of the hardest things now was living with knowing that Craig had wanted to write letters for people - something she discovered when sorting through his things - which he never got to do.

“For me, what would have mattered the most would have been to have had something for our daughter, whether that had been a letter or a voice message, or something, a video, something,” said Alison.

She added: “We took so many pictures of the pair of them - we weren’t stupid, we knew what was going to happen eventually - but for her to have a letter or something from him would have just meant the world and that chance was taken away from us.”

In a statement to SuffolkNews, Alison said: “I feel it is so important to share Craig’s story so that it doesn’t happen to families in the future.

“It’s so important that people know what is going on with their loved ones so that they can all be prepared when the worst thing happens.

“We should have been told how poorly he was so that we could have had the time we needed with him.

“Moving forward, the hospital need to recognise that there is a family behind every patient who need to know what’s happening. They need to be informed.”

Dr Ewen Cameron, chief executive of WSFT, said: “We offer our deepest condolences to Mr Sawyer’s family for their loss and thank Mrs Sawyer for sharing her story with the board.

“We are sorry there was a delay in recognising the seriousness of Mr Sawyer’s condition and for the lack of communication with his family about just how ill he was.

“These things, alongside the Covid-19 pandemic visiting restrictions at the time, meant that we did not help the family to say goodbye in the way they would have liked to.

“This is incredibly sad, and I would like to apologise to the family for compounding their pain and heartache.

“As a result of this incident, we have updated our radiology processes.”

Also, earlier this year the trust launched a new patient safety initiative called Call 4 Concern - already in place in a number of other NHS trusts - whereby patients and their families can request a clinical review on a patient’s condition if they feel they are not being listened to or their concerns taken seriously.

And within the last year, WSFT has introduced the ReSPECT process to help improve patient choice and communication.