Taking on the NHS
ROSIE BROCKLEHURST FRANCZAK recounts the litany of health service errors that led up to the premature death of her husband
Rosie and Paul
Ultimately there is no headline story from “seventy-six-year-old man with avoidable gangrene dies from cancer a few weeks earlier than he might have done.” My husband Paul’s legacy was the dozens of young students who wrote to him, and to me, about how he had changed their life for the better over 36 years when he taught them English and Drama at Homewood School in Tenterden, Kent. But that such a much-loved and respected teacher in one part of the public sector should be so let down by another part gives pause to realise that when things go wrong, they can go terribly wrong.
I have been pursuing complaints about Paul’s treatment for a whole year. My beloved partner died in the most appalling way on 5 August 2025. He was at home as he had wished, but he died without any sedation or any visit from district nurses to deliver pain relief. He was curled up in a pool of blood on the floor, with clots at nose and mouth, with agony on his face. I found him there.
If you need to complain about hospital treatment, the local ‘Patient Experience’ via the NHS Trust that covers the Conquest in Hastings or the District General in Eastbourne is the place to do it. Look it up online. They are very helpful. But the East Sussex NHS Trust does not cover primary care. The Integrated Care Board or ICB, is supposed to cover all complaints about GP surgeries.
I know this because of my – and Paul’s – experience. He died 18 days after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, one we obtained only because I had taken him to A&E for a suspected bowel blockage caused, we thought, by medication for a prior illness. At this stage he had lost a lot of weight and was not eating.
Paul’s treatment incorporated a catalogue of avoidable errors. He ended up with gangrene in one foot after an urgent referral was ‘overlooked’. Blame was placed by the Hastings GP surgery on the vascular secretary at Eastbourne hospital. It took nine months for the Carisbrooke Surgery to confess it was they who had overlooked the urgent referral.
The blocked vascular system in the leg caused him enormous pain and sleep deprivation. He slept in an armchair for six weeks. It caused two damaging falls which undoubtedly shortened his life after cancer was finally discovered. No one could have known that he only had 18 days to live when the cancer was found. But there had been plenty of time to get district nurses on Paul’s case to deliver sedation. That did not happen. No one came to see him other than one assessor. No information was supplied. Two days after he died, information and telephone help line numbers arrived in the post.
We never saw an oncologist. At that time, two years ago, we were told a two-week ‘care pathway’ had become a four-week care pathway to oncology – in my view simply a euphemism for ‘waiting list’. The inexperienced registrar gastroenterologist told Paul he might have six months to live. He should never have said this. The hospital cancer care nurse did not listen to either of us about his eating-where he had developed mouth thrush from metronidazole used to reduce a toe-bone infection arising from gangrene. She kept going on about feeding him cheese and biscuits which he could not even swallow. It was so wrong to raise his and my hopes. This was at a ‘BBN’ – bearer of bad news – meeting. But we had already had the bad news in A&E where he had a CT scan on 18 July, taken there because of my initiative, no one else’s.
GP support was non-existent. How the system works to assist someone to die at home was not explained, and those failings allowed him, a much-loved teacher, to die horribly and in agony.
When he had what I suspected was a DVT in the leg two days before he died, no one from the surgery came to visit him. But they did diagnose a muscular issue over the telephone without any examination. I had been nursing him for months. Although disabled myself, when Paul got stuck on the toilet, I had to carry him to bed leaning against my back, his hands over my shoulders.
He should have been CT scanned and operated on within two weeks of the Doppler blood flow test. But the urgent referral we were assured had been made by the surgery was not made. He was not seen for six whole weeks. He only just avoided having to have his leg amputated.
Pictures of his dead body were taken by police when I called 999 on the morning of his death. In shock, I did not think to take pictures myself of him on the floor. I had to fight both the police and the coroner’s office to get hold of those pictures to support investigations following my complaints. I am an articulate woman and a journalist. But taking on the system of the NHS can defeat the strongest amongst us. How much more so for those who have no one to fight their corner?
There will always be human error. Human brilliance needs to be acknowledged too, and there has been a lot of that. I spent days writing letters to hospital CEOs and surgeons thanking them for saving Paul’s leg in an operation on 26 April. I will always be haunted by the image of him and his suffering. It is not right that this should be covered up. We must recognise that change for the better comes from humility, self-reflection and a genuine desire to improve. I do not want anyone else to suffer as Paul did.
The NHS is the best public service we have ever created in this country for the benefit of the people. We all have a duty to ensure it does not fail and to support the many wonderful people who work in it to make it better.
A Much Loved Teacher
Paul Franczak was the son of a Polish airman, Jan, who escaped the Nazi threat in 1938 and who served in Britain during WW2 in 301 squadron, working on Lancasters.
Paul was born in Pembury and lived in Maidstone. He attended university at Oxford and Reading and, after a spell in business, he took a PGSE and went to teach English Media Studies and Drama at Homewood School in Tenterden in 1984. He was briefly deputy head of Rye College before returning to Homewood.
Paul reconnected with his teenage friend Rosie Brocklehurst two decades ago, and they moved to St Leonards, getting married in 2010.
The Homewood School created the Franczak Drama Prize in memory of Paul. One of his students wrote:“You have touched the souls of so many… thank you, Paul. For everything.”
THE NHS RESPONSE
HIP Contacted the Carisbrooke Surgery but was told “the practice is unable to comment”. However, this is an edited extract from the letter the surgery sent to Ms Brocklehurst Franczak after Paul’s death concerning a referral from the GP surgery to the Eastbourne District General Hospital.
“Our own internal review has since confirmed that although the referral letter was dictated on 19th of March 2025 and typed on 21st of March 2025 the e-mail containing this urgent referral was unfortunately not sent by the practise [sic] on the 21st of March 2025… This was the result of human error and I would like to offer my sincere apologies for this mistake we fully knowledge how important timely communication is in urgent vascular cases I’m very sorry that this error occurred… our usual practise policy for sending referrals is 2 working days for urgent referrals and five working days for routine referrals… I recognise how upsetting it must have been to have to chase this information yourselves at a time of Mr Franczak’s symptoms were worsening and you were understandably anxious.”
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Rosie Brocklehurst Franczak wishes to add that since writing this she has discovered that it is the Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) that is supposed to investigate these cases, certainly for Primary Care and the Integrated Care Board (ICB) mentioned here, does not investigate. I was given incorrect information. The PHSO can take many months and in some cases years to reach a conclusion and on Trust Pilot, the PHSO has received a 98% negative rating from a cohort of 500 people who have complained to them over a period of time. My initial experience is that their systems are bureaucratic, their response Kafkaesque and incomprehensible, and I do not hold out much hope that this final process of complaint is not going to drive me to an early grave. I would also add that the poor woman who got blamed for the practice’s error was not going to be told initially, until I insisted she was told and cleared. She had been under a cloud for many months because of the claim by the surgery who sent proof to my darling husband Paul that the urgent referral had been sent. He was supposed to bee seen within two weeks but was not referred to what is an infrequent vascular clinic held at the Conquest, (a spur hospital for vascular) to the Royal Sussex ‘hub’ 37miles away in Brighton where the surgical team is based. There were errors made there, but not as serious as the total lack of support Paul and I experienced during the terminal part of his illness. To die in agony , body contorted, without receiving sedation is unconscionable and I will be haunted by this image until the end of my days.
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