A "considerate and conscientious” woman who died after her wheelchair fell backwards off an ambulance ramp at Norfolk’s busiest hospital died an accidental death, a jury has found.
An inquest heard that Anita Woodford, 66, was being removed from the parked vehicle outside of the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital (N&N) when the tragedy happened.
Mrs Woodford had been taken from her home in Brisley, near Dereham, in a non-emergency ambulance for a dialysis appointment at the N&N when the incident happened on the morning of November 15, 2021.
A two-day inquest into her death, which was held with a jury at Norfolk Coroner’s Court in Norwich, heard she had been placed in the wrong wheelchair on arrival at the hospital.
She was given a hospital 'porter' wheelchair instead of an on-board ERS Medical wheelchair – the firm which provided the patient transport service – before an ambulance care assistant loaded her off the vehicle.
Jurors were shown CCTV footage of the moment an assistant guided the porter chair with Mrs Woodford back down the ramp before it toppled as it reached the bottom and fell violently backwards.
Mrs Woodford suffered a head injury in the fall, including a 2cm cut to the back of her head, and died two weeks later.
In a statement, Mrs Woodford’s husband of 45 years, Graham Woodford, explained how his wife had suffered from depression following family bereavements and had gradually turned to alcohol to cope.
In 2019, she retired from her job at Elmham Surgery, near Dereham, where she had worked for 25 years.
During the pandemic, her alcohol intake increased and, following a visit to her GP in August 2021, she was admitted to the N&N with several health problems related to alcoholism, including severe liver disease.
Dr Curtis Ofiah, a consultant at the Royal London Hospital, was called to give expert witness evidence.
He told the inquest that Mrs Woodford was considered to have “a number of high-risk factors” leaving her susceptible to bleeding.
A CT scan had flagged eight days earlier, on November 7, a small amount of bleeding on the brain. Following the injury to her head, CT results showed further bleeding on the brain.
His opinion was that the incident was a “probable cause” of her death and that her death had been accelerated by a few weeks.
She had been on palliative end-of-life care and medical staff in charge of her care had anticipated that she would have lived to see Christmas 2021.
But her condition deteriorated, and she died at home on November 29.
A jury concluded that the 66-year-old’s death was accidental.
They recorded a short conclusion of "accident caused by trauma which likely accelerated underlying pre-existing conditions and probably contributed to the timing of her death."
The inquest was led by assistant coroner Johanna Thompson, who advised she would be writing to the local hospitals to support a request by ERS to permit them to place warnings for their staff not to use porter trollies outside the hospital building unless as a last resort.
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