An elderly patient died from infected bed sores at a hospital where shocking standards of care were exposed by an undercover nurse two years ago.

A coroner has heavily criticised Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust after the death of great-grandmother Georgina Damara, 89, who was admitted to the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton with a broken hip. An inquest heard a lack of adequate treatment meant she developed pressure sores which became infected and led to her death.

Brighton and Hove Coroner Veronica Hamilton-Deeley said Mrs Damara was subjected to a "miserable and painful time" on the ward and promised to write to the hospital trust to demand they take action.

The fresh attack comes after BBC's Panorama programme exposed serious failings in the way elderly patients were cared for in the same hospital in July 2005.

Mrs Damara, of Upper St James's Street, Brighton, was admitted to the hospital on September 30 last year after a fall at a neighbour's flat.

But her case was handled so badly that six weeks later she died - killed by blood poisoning, caused by wounds she suffered from lying in her bed, the coroner ruled.

At an inquest at Brighton County Court yesterday Miss Hamilton- Deeley blasted hospital workers for

  • Failing to keep proper notes about the pensioner's condition
  • Failing to fill out a care plan which meant Mrs Damara missed out on important monitoring by nurses
  • Failing to regularly turn the patient in bed, which would have helped prevent the sores, and
  • Failing to communicate about Mrs Damara's condition with her family.
  • Miss Hamilton-Deeley said: "I shall hope the deficiencies I have identified - serious basic life-threatening deficiencies - will be remedied at the earliest possible opportunity."

The coroner's verdict was welcomed by Mrs Damara's family.

Her daughter Eleanor Fox said: "We feel very angry. We were there on a daily basis but nobody listened to us. We feel she did suffer."

A spokeswoman for the hospital trust said officials had apologised to the family.

  • Nurse revealed horror scenes

Margaret Haywood went undercover as a nurse at the Royal Sussex for BBC's Panorama in July 2005.

Over four months she catalogued a diary of mistreatment of acutely ill and frail patients in the Peel and Stewart ward, a 27-bed acute medical ward located in the oldest part of the hospital.

She described it as a terrible place, the worst she had experienced in her career, and filmed patients crying out in pain, lying in their own urine and being shouted at by staff. A horrified nation saw patients not getting medication or food and their calls for help going unheeded.

The day after the Panorama special was aired The Argus was inundated with calls from relatives and ex-patients who had their own horror stories to tell. They said the problem was the same for most of the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust's elderly wards.

The hospital trust have since drawn up an action plan of improvements but less than two years' later the finger is being pointed again.