A RETIRED Sellafield engineer and 'pillar of the community' from Cockermouth died in hospital in Whitehaven two weeks after falling in his care home, an inquest has heard.

William James Oldfield, 85, died peacefully at the West Cumberland Hospital on December 28, 2023, after being placed on end-of-life care.

Mr Oldfield had suffered an unwitnessed fall in Dalton Court care home in Cockermouth on the morning of December 14, being found on the lounge floor by staff at around 8.10am.

Paramedics attended at around 8.45am and assessed him, discovering bruising to his right side, but were able to help him to his room and give him paracetamol for the pain in his side.

They reported that Mr Oldfield's daughter who attended said he seemed 'back to his normal self'.

Mr Oldfield was attended to by a GP from Cumbria Health On Call (CHOC) at around 7.30pm, due to his pain being 'agonising'.

The GP found no head injury, and discovered Mr Oldfield had not been prescribed any pain relief, and so prescribed paracetamol, and felt he could be cared for in the home as he did not want to go to hospital.

The following evening, however, staff again called paramedics as Mr Oldfield was 'slumped on the sofa', and had a 'reduced level of consciousness'.

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He was taken to hospital in Whitehaven at around 7pm, where a chest x-ray showed that Mr Oldfield had broken several ribs.

Due to the severity of his injuries, he was transferred to the Cumberland Infirmary to be managed on the 'high-risk trauma pathway', and arrived in Carlisle at around 3am on December 16.

However due to the lack of bed space on the Hazel Ward, he waited for 17 and a half hours in emergency, being moved on four occasions, but was 'regularly assessed', and allocated a bed on the ward at 8.38pm.

The hospital had 'retrospectively' reported that Mr Oldfield had fallen from a hospital trolley at 5.30pm on December 16, but there was no evidence that any new or exacerbation of his injuries had occurred.

He was treated 'conservatively' but his condition deteriorated, and was transferred back to the West Cumberland Hospital on December 21 for ward-based comfort care, and passed away a week later on the Loweswater Suite.

Under examination by area coroner for Cumbria, Kirsty Gomersal, Dr Mitchell, the Trust’s clinical director in emergency medicine, said that 'relevant pathways were followed within the confines of the challenges presented at the hospital'.

He said that there was no evidence that Mr Oldfield had been harmed by his lengthy wait in emergency, or that his fall from the hospital trolley had exacerbated his injuries.

Jill Foster, chief nurse at the Trust, said under examination that a review had taken place and actions had been identified to be taken.

She accepted that a falls risk assessment should have been undertaken at the hospital, but was not.

Ms Foster undertook to update Ms Gomersal as to the actions the Trust had carried out by the end of January.

Ms Gomersal accepted the cause of death offered of frailty of old age and fractured ribs, with an underlying cause of dementia.

She concluded that Mr Oldfield's death was accidental, as a result of his fall on the morning of December 14.

Paying tribute to Mr Oldfield, she said: "He was the much-loved husband of Pamela, the adored dad to Alison and Russell, and good father in law to Julie and the adored grandad of Charlotte.

"He was a pillar of the local community, sitting on the parish council.

"He was very well-liked.

"If a job needed doing, Bill was the man for the job, and his granddaughter told me of the memories that she had of him making things in the workshop, everything made by hand, including stages in the garden, so that plays could be put on by his family."