A DYING 84-year-old woman made a desperate mobile phone call to her family to say she was getting no help from hospital staff, it has been claimed.

Dorothy Simpson told her son she was having difficulty breathing and that no one at Royal Bournemouth Hospital was helping her, he says.

Within 20 minutes the popular great-grandmother was dead.

Only one member of her close-knit family had managed to get to the hospital before she died.

Her body was then left on ward three for several hours despite her family’s pleas for a doctor to confirm the death, they claim.

Mrs Simpson contacted her son Steve at 6pm on Saturday, July 27, just two hours after he had been chatting to her on the ward.

“She sounded breathless and said: ‘Can you come now?’,” said Steve, who lives at Danesbury Avenue in Tuckton.

“I phoned my brother, Jim, because he lives nearer the hospital than I do and he went straight there. He told me to get there as soon as possible and, when I did, Jim was just covering up her face with a blanket because she had passed away.”

Jim, who lives at Throop, said: “As I walked towards her bed I could hear a machine bleeping.

“She was gulping for breath so I shouted for help from a nurse.

“A couple of minutes later she said mum had died.”

Steve said no doctors attended and his mum’s body was still there several hours later.

“We were just standing there on our own and didn’t know what to do,” said Steve.

“Other patients were disgusted about what was going on and said they didn’t want to stay on the ward any longer.

“You read about things like this in the paper but never think it is going to happen to you or someone you know.

“I thought the Royal Bournemouth was a good hospital but we have seen a very different side to it.”

Mrs Simpson, who lived at Hengistbury Head, moved to Bournemouth from Surrey with her husband Eric and four sons when they were children.

Three of her sons – Jim, 64, Steve, 63, and Graham, 61 – live in the Bournemouth area. Phil, 60, lives in London. Mrs Simpson had 10 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Steve added: “I’ve never contacted a newspaper before or made a complaint about anything, but I’m doing this for mum. They didn’t get a doctor to her, they just let her die.

“Why should she have to phone me when she’s dying?

“She was told there were no staff around during the night or at weekends.”

Mrs Simpson had been in hospital for two weeks and was receiving treatment for a lung infection.

The family have made a complaint to the hospital and the case is being examined.

THE hospital’s director of nursing and midwifery Paula Shrobbrook told the Daily Echo: “We express our sincere condolences to Mrs Simpson’s family and are sorry they have had cause to complain to you.

  “We are investigating this case, are in contact with the family and are working closely with them to address their concerns. We would like to reassure the family and the public that all our wards are staffed according to RCN guidelines.”