A 13-year-old girl died in “unbearable pain” following delays in her care for sepsis after being dismissed by hospital staff as a “dramatic teenager”, an inquest heard.
Chloe Longster had been a healthy, fun-loving teen until she was admitted to Kettering General Hospital with pneumonia in November 2022. She died just 18 hours later after developing sepsis. Her devastated mum Louise said her family believe her death was “completely preventable”.
Ms Longster told how she repeatedly asked medics for help but was treated as a “mum who had been on Google” while her daughter was dismissed as a “diva teen”. She said her daughter had been in so much pain she asked her whether she was going to die, adding: “It’s haunting that the 13-year-old was the one who was right.”
At the first day of a week-long inquest, Mrs Longster said pain relief for her daughter was “delayed” and in her final hours she had been treated with “contempt”. On the weekend before she died, Chloe, from Market Harborough, Leicestershire, had been sniffly and had a cough but had been well enough to attend a sleepover.
Assistant coroner Sophie Lomas heard Chloe had mild asthma and used inhalers but had never had an asthma attack. Giving evidence, Mrs Longster said: “She was incredibly healthy. She only used the inhaler very rarely.”
Chloe and her mum Louise (
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PA)
On the Monday, Chloe did not feel well enough for school so her mum left her brother, 17, at home with her and went to work with instructions to call her if anything changed. But at 11.15am Chloe phoned her mum to say her ribs hurt and she’d been sick.
Mrs Longster said: “I phoned my husband and asked him to go back to her. He went back and said he could see she was uncomfortable but it didn’t seem like it was horrendous.” Mrs Longster then also decided to go home and see her daughter.
She added: “I could see she was becoming more and more uncomfortable and panicked about the pain.” Mrs Longster was asked by the coroner if this was unusual for Chloe. “Yes,” she said. “She liked to go out to dancing, she liked to live and being ill was massively inconvenient for her. It was very out of character.”
She couldn’t get through to the GP and phoned 999 to be told an ambulance would take two hours. So Mrs Longster, her son and Chloe went to Kettering General Hospital by car. She added: “She was frightened. She was holding my hand, she was squeezing it.”
Chloe was in so much pain that she couldn’t walk to the door and had to be taken inside in a wheelchair by her brother while Mrs Longster found a parking space. In the paediatric A&E department Mrs Longster said she noticed how pale and clammy her daughter looked.
Chloe Longster died aged 13 (
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PA)
She died of sepsis (
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PA)
She was triaged and placed in a side room before being given oral Oramorph for her pain. Mrs Longster added: “She asked if she could be put to sleep because she was in so much pain. She said to me ‘stop saying it’s going to be OK mum. It hurts.”
A cannula was inserted but it fell out while Chloe was still in A&E. Mrs Longster and her son then had to take Chloe down to x-ray themselves. Mrs Longster saw the x-ray and noticed what she thought was a mass at the bottom of Chloe’s lung. When she returned to the A&E department she was told Chloe had a chest infection.
A doctor prescribed antibiotics and she was given one dose before being admitted to the Skylark Ward. Mrs Longster said had to repeatedly ask doctors for more pain relief for her daughter once they were on the ward. She added: “I remember making a comment that it feels like we are chasing her pain, not getting on top of it.”
An on-call doctor then saw Chloe and told her mum she had pneumonia and would need to be admitted for intravenous antibiotics and fluids. When they arrived on the Skylark Ward Mrs Longster went to the nurses’ station. She said: “I remember in A&E having to convince them she really wasn’t well.. I was not a mum who’d been on Google and she wasn’t a dramatic teenager.
“Somebody (on Skylark) asked ‘what’s your name’? I said I was Chloe Longster’s mum and they said ‘we know about her and we’ll be round’. I remember that sinking feeling because their interpretation of me had obviously transferred upstairs. I went back and messaged my husband and said I didn’t think they were taking it seriously.
“I was told by another mum that there was a poorly baby on the ward and, I get that, but my baby was poorly too.”
She said: “A nurse kept coming in to do observations but nothing was happening. I asked what was going on and she said ‘she’s on red’. I thought to myself ‘don’t Google it because I’ll panic’. But I shouldn’t have to Google it.”
The nurse later did observations on Chloe and realised her oxygen had dropped. Mrs Longster added: “They initially thought the machine had broken.” Chloe was moved to a side room and Mrs Longster was told this was because she had tested positive for Influenza A.
A consultant was called and more people began coming into Chloe’s room. Mrs Longster said: “I asked a nurse if she was going to be OK and the nurse said she didn’t know. How I got out of the room I don’t know, but I just remember hitting the floor and being slumped there. It felt like Chloe hadn’t been taken seriously about how unwell she was until that point.
“She had asked me if she was going to die. I took that as her trying to articulate how poorly she felt. It’s haunting that the 13-year-old was the one who was right. During Chloe’s last 18 hours on this Earth she was in pain and treated with contempt.”
Mrs Longster said that she got the impression nurses believed Chloe was being ‘dramatic’.
During her time on A&E, Chloe was seen by Dr Marwan Gamaleldin who was, at that time, a registrar. He said a nurse had come to find him at about 2.20pm to ask him to see Chloe because she had started the sepsis screening tool but Chloe’s score had not been high enough to trigger further examination.
He told the inquest: “She didn’t come across as struggling to breathe. Breathing with pain is different to struggling to breathe.” He said he began thinking about a ‘differential’ diagnosis than a bacterial infection because of her pain level and high heart rate.
He said: “I saw a shadow on the left side of her lung in the x-ray. In that context, infection was likely. I remember saying that the pain wasn’t proportional to what we’d normally see in an infection. The absence of fever is a red flag. If there’s no fever and a high heart rate you start to think about something else.”
The inquest, at The Guildhall in Northampton, continues until Friday.
