Bethany ‘Beth’ Shipsey, 21, died in February 2017 at Worcestershire Royal Hospital
The death of a 21-year-old rape survivor was today ruled to be suicide after she took an overdose of online diet pills.
Bethany ‘Beth’ Shipsey, 21, died a year ago at Worcestershire Royal Hospital after taking a fatal amount of diet pills containing toxic chemical DNP.
Coroner Geraint Williams exposed a series of failings in the care of Miss Shipsey at the busy A&E department.
But the coroner said there was not enough evidence to suggest she would have survived had she received better care.
Miss Shipsey had taken 14 overdoses before the one that killed her and had been receiving mental health support following an abusive relationship.
But her inquest heard she ‘had not been considered a suicide risk’, despite her history.
Her mother Carole Shipsey, who is a trained nurse, told Sky News that the family counted 27 patients being treated on trolleys in corridors at the hospital.
She said: ‘There was no communication with us, there was no respect or dignity. Bethany literally went in on a trolley that night and she died on a trolley.’
They added: “Bethany’s basic human right to life was breached in the very place you would expect it to be preserved.”
Bethany’s parents Doug and Carole Shipsey with their son Tom at Worcestershire Coroner’s Court in Stourport last month for a previous hearing
Parents Mr and Mrs Shipsey hold a photograph of their daughter Bethany
Miss Shipsey (pictured) took a fatal amount of diet pills containing the toxic chemical DNP
She added that the failings in medical care ‘didn’t give Bethany a chance’.
The inquest hearing was held today at Worcestershire Coroner’s Court in Stourport.
On the night Miss Shipsey was admitted, the first junior doctor she saw, Dr Alireza Miroumaud had never treated a patient who had overdosed on DNP diet pills before, the inquest was told.
He also failed to consult a service called Toxbase, which provides appropriate advice for medics on different drugs overdoses.
Kirsty South, a senior nurse on duty before Miss Shipsey died, broke down in tears as she gave her evidence.
She described the evening of the young woman’s death as ‘one of the most challenging shifts we have ever worked’ and confessed ‘it would be wrong for me to say that it doesn’t occur regularly’.
A previous hearing was told how Miss Shispey ordered the diet pills from Ukraine online, before texting her friend with a sad face emoji and the words: ‘I have just overdosed on DNP.’
She was rushed to the Worcestershire hospital on February 15 2017, where she had been on home leave from its psychiatric ward.
Her mother said she ‘had false confidence in her fellow colleagues’ after A&E staff dismissed her daughter’s symptoms as a panic attack.
She said at one point she was even forced to try and open her daughter’s airways herself because of ‘complacent’ nurses failing to act.
Her father told the hearing he was forced to show doctors what the killer drug DNP does on his phone, while his daughter complained of ‘burning from the inside.
The 21-year-old woman died after overdosing on the online diet pills
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DNP, the ‘extremely dangerous’ drug sold as a weight loss aid
DNP is sold as a weight loss aid, but has been described as ‘extremely dangerous to human health’ by doctors.
It is sold mostly over the internet under a number of different names but contains 2, 4-Dinitrophenol.
It is marketed mainly to bodybuilders as a weight loss aid as it is thought to dramatically boost metabolism.
The manufactured drug is yellow and odourless and was previously used as a herbicide and fungicide. It was launched as a slimming aid in the US in the 1930s but then banned in 1938, due to the severe side-effects.
Depending on the amount consumed, signs of acute poisoning could include nausea, vomiting, restlessness, flushed skin, sweating, dizziness, headaches, rapid respiration and irregular heart-beat, possibly leading to coma and death.