The grief-stricken husband of a care home resident who died after choking on a jam doughnut said he will never be able to get over her death.
Tommy Hughes told how he has been left heartbroken by the failures surrounding the death of Nanette after the country’s biggest care home company were last week fined £640,000 for serious health and safety breaches.
His family had to endure the horror of discovering it was the second time HC-One, which runs the 58-bed Orchard Care Home in Tullibody had been in court over a similar death, following a fatality at another of its properties.
Retired joiner Tommy, 68, said: “When she went into the care home, I thought she would be looked after.
“My wife should not have died in this way.”
Nanette, who had vascular dementia and had suffered a stroke, was on a strict soft-food diet but was given a mid-morning snack by a carer who then left her alone.
Falkirk Sheriff Court heard a risk assessment carried out eight months before her death found she was “at high risk” of choking while eating and she should have “maximum supervision”.
Tommy, who was married to Nanette for 45 years, said: “When my wife went in, I was going there every night after work.
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“I was there every tea time sitting with her and the nurse said, ‘Why are you coming in every evening?’
“I said, ‘Because she’s my wife’.
“They said, ‘You said it, she’s your wife, we’re the carers, let us do our job. Why don’t you have a break?’
“Then when they cut down the visiting, two or three times afterwards when I went in I found her sitting in her bedroom by herself with her dinner in front of her.”
Tommy added: “My dad had been in the Orchard Care Home previously, so I had great faith. My dad was treated well but, unknown to me, the home had changed ownership.”
Nanette, a former knitwear factory worker, had been a resident since 2017 after a severe stroke which left her unable to “mobilise or verbalise”, and with severe cognitive impairment.
In August 2019, when the incident happened, a care assistant gave her a cup of tea and a treat then left the room. The alarm was sounded when an off-duty worker found Nanette choking, the doughnut with a bite taken out of it beside her.
Despite staff performing abdominal thrusts while waiting for an ambulance, she later passed away.
HC-One Limited pleaded guilty last Wednesday to failing to ensure that residents at the home were not exposed to risks to their health and safety.
Sheriff Keith O’Mahony, who imposed the fine, said it was a “significant” aggravating factor that less than three months before the tragedy Darlington-based HC-One had been fined £270,000 over the death of a resident in one of its other homes.
James McConnell, 72, died after chewing on disinfectant tablets thinking they were mints at Lomond Court home, Glenrothes.
Tommy, who was in court with the couple’s son Michael, said: “Nanette would have been 68 at the end of this month. We got married in 1975 and I scattered her ashes on our 45th wedding anniversary, two-and-a-half years ago.”
Michael, 45, added: “This should never had happened to my mum.”
James Tugendhat, chief executive officer of HC-One said afterwards: “We offer our heartfelt condolences and apologies to Mrs Hughes’ family and loved ones.
“Additional safeguards are now in place across all our homes to prevent a repeat of an accident like this.”
