THE mum of a 21-year-old woman who died after overdosing on diet pills in an overwhelmed A&E department has described how she felt “invisible” as she attempted to warn staff of how quickly her daughter was deteriorating.

Speaking at Worcestershire Coroner’s Court on Monday (January 15), Carole Shipsey paid tribute to her daughter Beth who died at Worcestershire Royal Hospital on February 15 after taking 2,4 Dintrophernol (DNP).

“She was full of life and very outspoken, particularly when it came to animal well-being,” she said.

“A very gifted photographer. She was quite unique in that she just enjoyed nature, she enjoyed travelling. She just enjoyed life.”

The emergency staff who treated Beth at WRH had never heard of DNP before, with information having to be printed from TOXBASE – a database used when dealing with an unfamiliar drug.

Carole Shipsey, a qualified nurse, told the court: “Everyone was busy doing what they needed to do for others, but no-one seemed to appreciate the potential seriousness of the situation [of Beth's condition]”

She said she trusted the doctors and nurses would have all read the information from TOXBASE – which warned of the likelihood of rapid deterioration – but this proved not to be the case.

Staff had felt Beth’s condition was stable enough to downgrade her from the resuscitation room to a cubicle in the majors area of the department, less than an hour before she went into cardiac arrest.

However, the accounts given by both Carole and her husband Doug differed drastically from that of staff in regards to Beth’s condition while in the resuscitation room.

“She’s normally a very pale complexion[d] girl, but she was red, she was really flushed,” said Carole.

“She was fidgeting on the bed. She told me: ‘I’m burning from the inside’. Those were her exact words.”

Carole described how her daughter was sweating so much, the cardiac monitoring electrodes “kept coming off her skin because she was very, very moist”.

“I could see the nurse was busy, so I stuck them back on. I even changed them to get a better signal.”

Doug said: “Something I was pretty startled by through the whole course of events in the evening: nobody spoke to me. What is the treatment plan? I was trying to convince [staff, having read up on DNP] this was not paracetamol, that you can reverse easily.”

Carole said at one point while in the resuscitation room, “Bethany was bolt up right in bed, leaning forward, breathing faster than normal” and told her mum: “I can’t see properly”.

In order to cool her daughter down, Carole asked for ice and was told they did not have any in the emergency department.

So, she filled up rubber gloves with water and tried to apply them to the back of Beth’s neck and knees.

She said the cardiac monitoring alarm kept going off and was silenced numerous times and, unsure if the electrodes were connecting properly, Carole performed a manual radial pulse measurement.

She said Beth’s “heart rate kept going up in increments” and “never did come back down again”.

Soon after that, Carole was told Beth would be moved. “I was shocked,” she told the court.

“I regret this, but I had confidence in my fellow colleagues,” she said. “A false sense of feeling that they would take care of her.”

She went on to say: “A short time after that we’re on the move again. They moved her bed into the high care unit and the nurse was on her own.”

The curtain was pulled over to allow Beth to use a bed pan and Carole said when she opened it again her daughter had “rolled against the bedside and was stuck on it.

“I pushed her into the middle of the bed. She was white, really pale, eyes open and her pupils were pin point.”

She said she told the nurse: “I’m not happy, can you come? I think you need to come now, I think she’s going to fit.”

Holding back tears, Carole told the court how Beth raised her arm and it went stiff.

“As a nurse, I’m thinking: ‘I need to open her airway’.

“I put the bed flat. I was trying to open her airways. I had my uniform on and I think some people thought I was on shift.”

The nurse then sounded an alarm as Beth had a seizure before going into cardiac arrest.

Coroner Geraint Williams adjourned the inquest until February 14, for his verdict.