The deputy medical director of a hospital trust has apologised directly to the family of a 20-year-old woman for a lack of continuity of care following her death from sepsis.

Mr Paul McArdle made the apology on behalf of Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust at the inquest into the death of Chloe Rideout from Coverack who died on October 20, 2018 following an appendectomy at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth.

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At the end of the first day of evidence in a three day inquest being conducted by acting senior coroner Andrew Cox, Mr McArdle told the family how sorry the trust was for the family's loss.

"On a personal note on behalf of the trust I want to say how sorry we are for the family's loss," he said. "I cannot imagine how painful it must be to be here today and relive the events that happened all that time ago.

"Further I think it is only right that I would like to apologise unreservedly on behalf of the trust for the opportunities that were missed which led to the lack of continuity of care which themselves might have resulted in a different outcome for Chloe had those opportunities not been missed.

"I also recognise that it would be cold comfort and do little to take away the pain of your loss but if there is any way, as deputy medical director and as one of the safety leads for the organisation, I can provide any assurances about systems we have now put in place within the organisation to reduce the likelihood of similar errors occurring again, and these relate to specific pieces of work we are doing, I would be happy to explain these in detail should that be of any help either to the court or to the family."

Earlier the inquest heard from retired Surgeon Commander Anthony Lambert OBE, the man in charge of Chloe's care.

He said the weekend Chloe was admitted the hospital was on a code black and the hospital was very busy with patients, and he himself had gone down to the emergency department to try and clear the backlog of patients face to face.

He said before Chloe was discharged the clinical picture was of someone who was improving and the general feeling was she was improving over the course of the week.

Under questioning from the coroner, Mr Lambert said that he no longer worked at the hospital as a number of incidents had happened over a period of time and, with the death of Chloe, the trust had decided that his clinical care work there should stop. It had been investigated as a serious untoward incident and, as he had retired, he had never gone back.

The inquest was told that he had raised concerns about continuity of care at the trust going back to 2017 with emails sent to senior management - one of them being sent on the weekend Chloe was admitted.

Under questioning from the family of Chloe's counsel, Mr Lambert admitted Chloe had blood tests arranged that were not looked at or acted upon. He said her condition Monday to Friday was as expected following an appendectomy.

He said her deterioration on the Saturday was not realised because it was a new team that saw her. He said blood tests that were taken late on Friday had not been ordered by him and he hadn't seen them and no-one had acted on the results. If he had seen them she wouldn't have been discharged.

"The team doing the rounds on Saturday are new and didn't know the patients they are seeing and therefore that's the handover miss, that's the lack of continuity on that Friday to Saturday," he said. "When the team that had been looking after her weren't there and the team that were looking after her didn't know her, and therefore didn't appreciate that when they saw her she looked different to the day before clinically."

The inquest continues.