A former police officer from Wales died after getting his head trapped between bed rails and a mattress in a hospital in England. Max Dingle, from Powys, was one of two patients found to have been given substandard care at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust which has been fined more than £1.3m for the failures.
Passing sentence, senior district judge Paul Goldspring said the families of two patients who died at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital had suffered "unimaginable grief". The judge imposed a fine of £800,000 on one of two charges relating to the death of 31-year-old Mohammed Ismael Zaman, and an additional £533,334 over a charge brought in relation to the death of Mr Dingle, 83. The judge said the offences were aggravated by a fine the trust received in 2016 and a "poor health and safety record in the management of" Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.
He added that the charges were mitigated by the trust carrying out "full and extensive investigations immediately after both incidents". The trust, which was recently the subject of a highly-critical report into the maternity services it offered between 2000 and 2019, admitted the charges through its barrister at Telford Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday. The court heard Mr Zaman died after suffering severe blood loss while undergoing dialysis in 2019.
