Patients killed by wrong medication

21 Apr 2009

An inquest jury has ruled that three patients who died at Gosport War Memorial Hospital were given the wrong medication.

The inquest panel was giving its verdict on the deaths of ten patients at the hospital between 1996 and 1999.

The jury ruled that hospital staff gave inappropriate medication to Robert Wilson, Elsie Devine and Geoffrey Packman. The medication in question was diamorphine, an opioid.

The jury also found that another two patients, Elsie Lavender and Arthur Cunningham, died after they were given the correct medication but in the wrong doses.

Medication was not found to have contributed to the deaths of the other five patients.

The families of some of the victims have called for a criminal investigation, while the charity Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA) has called for a public inquiry.

Police have previously investigated the treatment of 92 patients at the hospital but the investigation did not lead to any prosecutions.

Guy Forster, a clinical negligence solicitor at Irwin Mitchell, said: “This verdict re-opens the debate as to whether, even now, there are sufficient safeguards to ensure proper use of opioids in hospitals and care homes”.

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