A young West Belfast mum has accused the Royal Victoria Hospital’s A&E department of letting her down after she was sent home and had to return again within an hour suffering from severe internal bleeding.
23-year-old Aisling McGrath was brought by ambulance to A&E at around 5pm last Tuesday after she started to bleed heavily. Speaking from her Laurel-bank home, Aisling told the Andersonstown News: “I wasn’t treated properly at all. They didn’t want to know. I kept saying, ‘Please will you help me?’ The pains in my stomach and the bleeding were getting worse and at one stage I even asked was I dying.
“I had my third baby in December and had to go back to hospital in February due to haemorrhaging and it turned out that there was still placenta tissue, afterbirth, left in my womb. I thought it was alright but when this happened I thought it was coming back again.”
Aisling added: “At around midnight I was told to go home and have a cup of tea, that I was just having a bad period.”
But within the hour she was back at A&E with her mum Elaine.
Bleeding
“I was adamant that Aisling wasn’t going home this time,” said Elaine. “I asked for a gynae doctor to examine her. I kept saying, ‘I know there is something wrong here with my daughter and she isn’t going home, can’t you see she is suffering severe bleeding and blood loss here?’
“Eventually around 6am Aisling was transferred to the City Hospital where she needed five pints of blood. She was neglected, simple as that.”
Aisling said that she’s been left traumatised by what happened to her.
“I’m even scared to go to the toilet now. I will be putting in a formal complaint once I’m back on my feet. I can’t sleep, if my mum hadn’t have come down the second time with me I’d probably have been sent home once again.”
A spokesperson for Belfast Trust said this week: “We cannot discuss an individual patient’s treatment.
“We would encourage Aisling to contact the Trust directly and we would be happy to meet with Aisling and her family to discuss any concerns she may have.”
