Woman ‘left unattended for 12 hours’ dies in Spanish hospital

POLICE are probing the death of a woman who was allegedly left unattended in a Spanish hospital for 12 hours.

The 64-year-old Romanian had been suffering from ill health and was taken to the San Juan de La Cruz Hospital in Ubeda, Jaen by ambulance after being collected from a nursing home in nearby Quesada.

She was accompanied by a representative from the residence who left once she had been admitted to emergencies at around 2.20pm.

But she was left alone on a stretcher and was unable to respond when her name was called out, leading staff to believe that she had left and remove her from the waiting list.

A police statement suggests that no-one paid any attention to her either before or after a change in shift at 10pm, and it was not until the early hours of the morning that a nurse asked who she was after earlier noticing her breathing heavily.

And when doctors went to check they found that she had died.

Managers at the nursing home insist they tried to contact her son after she was hospitalised, claiming he failed to answer his telephone, but he told police that the first call he received was from them when they informed him that his mother was dead.

Hospital manager Antonio Resola told Spanish media that “some patients leave” when emergencies is busy, adding that “we believe the woman was a terminal case and had been dead for a short time when she was found.”

The incident comes six months after the largest trade union in Spain slammed the hospital over a lack of staff, management and services.

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