Woman dies after swallowing plastic crayon that perforated her bowel
A coroner has called for changes at a high-security psychiatric hospital after a woman died from swallowing a plastic crayon.
In June 2021, Tammy Watkins, 36, died after eating a plastic ‘twist’ crayon at Rampton Hospital, Nottinghamshire, when it perforated her bowel.
An inquest in October found neglect at the hospital contributed to her death, but now a coroner is calling for further action to be taken.
Ms Watkins, 36, had been deemed ‘high risk’ for swallowing foreign objects for self harm – and had been restrained by mittens to prevent it from happening.
Despite her ranking as high risk, staff gave Ms Watkins a twistable crayon to use without her mittens on – a crayon which was not risk assessed or approved.
After she had ingested it without staff knowing, the crayon was noted as ‘missing’ but no report was filed to find it.
Ms Watkins began showing ‘symptoms of a complication of swallowing the item’, including vomiting, the following day.
She told a healthcare team in the hospital she could ‘feel the crayon inside her’ but was not taken for treatment until she told them she had swallowed a toothbrush.
After having an x-ray, no foreign bodies were found inside of her but symptoms continued to worsen.
The coroner said opportunities were missed to seek medical attention before Ms Watkins died on June 4, 2021, from a cardiac arrest.
Ms Watkins’ family said: ‘It seems there were a lot of mistakes made by everyone at Rampton Hospital and a lot of warning signs that she needed proper hospital care.’
But Coroner Laurinda Bower says the incident ‘demonstrates a further example of a failure by medical staff to recognise a deteriorating patient’.
Ifti Majid, chief executive of Nottinghamshire Healthcare, told the BBC: ‘On behalf of the trust, I would like to say how deeply sorry we are to Tammy’s friends and family and once again extend our sincere condolences for their loss.
‘We acknowledge that there were aspects of care which were not of the quality they should have been.’
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