Inquest finds gross failings in care of woman who drank too much water
An inquest jury has found there were “gross failings in care amounting to neglect” before a woman had a heart attack at a private mental health hospital due to complications from drinking excessive amounts of water.
Lillian Lucas, 28, known as Lily to her family and friends, died in September 2022 after being found unresponsive in her room on Milton ward at the Cygnet hospital in Kewstoke, near Weston-super-Mare, where she had been an inpatient since June.
An inquest jury at Avon coroner’s court found on Wednesday that opportunities were missed by staff to render care that would have prevented Lucas’s death, including a failure to monitor her worsening condition and inadequate response to her deterioration.
On 8 September 2022 she was found unresponsive in her room after drinking excessive amounts of water and transferred to Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI), the jury heard. She died the following day. Postmortem examinations found she died of a heart attack and the impact of psychogenic polydipsia, when due to a mental disorder a person experiences an uncontrollable urge to drink water.
The jury concluded on Wednesday that there were “gross failings in her care amounting to neglect”. In the record of the inquest, the jury said the Milton ward was “understaffed at a level deemed to be unsafe”.
Source: Guardian, 24 April 2024