A health board is being forced to apologise after telling a man there was nothing they could do and his wife was going to die before she recovered a few days later.
The Scottish Public Services Ombudsman has also ordered NHS Western Isles carry out training and a review of Uist and Barra Hospital.
It comes after it upheld a complaint from the patient and her husband that the health board “did not provide reasonable care and treatment”.
The woman started suffering abdominal pains on December 4, 2010 and her husband called NHS 24 the next morning. A doctor visited their home in the Western Isles and gave her morphine.
When the pain did not ease that afternoon, she was taken to Uist and Barra Hospital.
Three days later, the woman’s condition had gotten worse and a doctor was called to the nurse-run hospital. The doctor tried to get her airlifted to the mainland but the weather was too bad.
He then took the patient’s husband aside and told him his wife was unlikely to survive the night.
Despite this, her condition improved the following morning and she was airlifted from Benbecula to Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock.
She was treated for acute renal failure for several weeks before going home.
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