Nurses knew a mental health patient who died slumped in a hospital corridor had been left lying in his own urine for several hours, an inquest heard.
Peter Thompson 41, was discovered lifeless on the floor of the Edale House mental health unit after staff left him in a drunken stupor.
Eight hours before Mr Thompson was declared dead, nurses knew he had wet himself while asleep. But rather than wake him up or move him, a member of staff just placed a towel next to the patient. He was not given a blanket or a pillow, the jury heard.
Mr Thompson, a jobless dad, died in the early hours of April 4 last year from a lethal combination and alcohol and antipsychotic drugs, a pathologist concluded.
He was a voluntary inpatient at Edale House with a history of alcohol and drug problems and had been stopped from entering his ward the previous evening after he refused to surrender a bottle of vodka.
He was heavily intoxicated and had been abusive to staff on several occasions, the inquest was told.
Senior nurse Helen De Lacy-Leacey refused to let him in and Mr Thompson sat on the floor next to the ward entrance and fell asleep at around 8.10pm on April 3.
Night staff at the unit on Hathersage Road were forced to step over him to get in and out of the ward.
Ms De Lacy-Leacey told the coroner she ended her shift at 9.15pm and did not try to wake Mr Thompson to carry out a risk assessment of his condition.
She alerted night staff that the patient was outside the doors and asked them to ‘keep an eye on him and make sure he is okay’.
Coroner Nigel Meadows asked her: “If it were suggested that you simply couldn’t be bothered (to carry out a risk assessment) and it was time to leave work, what would you say?”
“I would disagree,” the nurse replied.
Dini Oyebadejo, the senior staff nurse that night, told the coroner that around 10.30pm he asked another nurse to put a towel on the floor next to Mr Thompson because he had wet himself.
Mr Oyebadejo said he checked on the patient several more times overnight but discovered him ‘stiff’ at 6.15am and raised the alarm.
Nick Stanage, representing Mr Thompson’s family, asked Ms De Lacy-Leacey: “Do you accept that the condition he was in when you left him could have been dangerous?”
The nurse replied: “It could have been dangerous yes.” She added she was concerned about the patient and said: “I felt he needed to sleep. I didn’t want him to leave the ward.”
Throughout the night staff checked on him a number of times but did not move him, the Manchester hearing heard.
Pathologist Dr Charles Wilson told the jury Mr Thompson, who previously lived on Monica Grove, Levenshulme, died from a fatal combination of alcohol and antipsychotic drugs he was taking.
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Story By: Pete Bainbridge