Man told his wife is dead finds her sleeping in next ward
A husband told by a hospital his wife had died an hour later discovered her asleep in the next ward.
Devastated Frank Priddis, 63, from Devon, UK, was grieving for his wife Sandra after nurses mixed up her details with another patient.
Sandra was at the Royal Devon and Exeter (RD&E) Hospital receiving treatment for bladder cancer when her family received the distressing call from a nurse.
"The nurse told me that my wife had passed away approximately an hour previously," Priddis said.
He rushed to the hospital and reported to a nurse's station to speak with a doctor regarding his wife's death.
He was told to wait while the appropriate personnel arrived.
As he waited, he couldn't quite believe his eyes when he glanced through a nearby window.
"In the meantime, for some unknown reason, I just happened to turn and look through the window into the ward, where I saw my wife fast asleep in her bed," he revealed.
"It turns out the nurse that had made the call had in fact picked up the wrong file and contacted the wrong family. I said 'if this is a joke, it is a sick one'."
Priddis said the error had a huge emotional toil on the whole family.
"No one can even begin to ever feel the pain, distress and anxiety that this caused myself, my daughter and my grandsons who were 12 and 14-years-old at the time, not forgetting the extended family too."
"This was the worst hour of my life by far as when I was in the car on the way to the hospital I told her that my life was now over, I had nothing left and I might as well give up."
Priddis said he came forward after reading a similar story that was suffered by another family at the same hospital.
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Carole-Anne Furzer revealed she received a call from the bereavement team in error last week which led her to wrongly believe her husband Gary Furzer had died.
Priddis says that he and his daughter Victoria had attended several meetings with the hospital's trust over the incident.
He said they were promised that protocol was in place to ensure that paperwork and wristbands were double-checked so that incidents like this couldn't happen again.
Priddis now says that he feels as though his family have been 'fobbed off' by the Trust.
"We attended several meetings with the hospital trust, and we received a letter saying that two healthcare professionals would double-check the names and wristbands of patients before any calls like these were made.
"Now I feel like they were just fobbing us off at the time. They just wanted us to go away and get over it."
Priddis said his wife Sandra has since sadly died and he decided not to go public with his story at the time of the error in September 2016 as he didn't want her to know anything about it.
RD&E deputy chief executive and chief nurse, Em Wilkinson-Brice, has since apologised for the error.
"Our staff make every effort to deliver the highest standards of compassionate care and support to patients and their families," she said.
"We are therefore really sorry for this lapse and for the upset and distress it has caused Mr Priddis and his family."
