MELONY Elder, who filed a formal complaint after she found her mother Sheila Patterson dead in her bed at Royal United Hospital, Bath, said she is completely unsatisfied with the investigation and angry her mother's belongings have been lost.

Mrs Elder, 43, of Wicks Drive, Chippenham, said her 73-year-old mother had been dead for at least an hour on May 2, but her death had not been noticed by nurses.

This week she received an initial report from the hospital, but she has now written to the hospital asking for an independent review.

The final straw came last week when she realised her mother's belongings had been lost.

She said: "Someone from the hospital rang and said they had found her belongings.

"They came along to my house and gave them back to me, but they weren't my mother's things. They belonged to somebody else.

"My partner had to come back from Croydon to be with me because I was so upset," said Mrs Elder.

When the man returned to pick up the wrong belongings, he told Mrs Elder there was little chance that her mother's things would ever be found.

Mrs Elder said the two-page investigation report had failed to give her an explanation as to why staff did not notice her mother was dead and was full of discrepancies.

The report stated that on May 1 her mother was semi-conscious, but the doctor had confirmed to Mrs Elder that her mother was fully unconscious, and responsive to pain.

The report also said her mother was receiving oxygen from a facemask, when Mrs Patterson was actually receiving it through a nasal canular.

Mrs Elder spoke to a doctor about her mother's antibiotics on May 1 but the report said the conversation was to have taken place on May 2.

"If they get simple dates and times wrong, then what else in the report is inaccurate?" said Mrs Elder.

She said when she first complained about her mother's death she was told Mrs Patterson had been checked at 12.20pm, ten minutes before Mrs Elder arrived.

"In the report it said she was checked at 12.00 midday. They have changed what they said to me at the complaints meeting, but there is still no way she went cold in half an hour," said Mrs Elder.

A letter from the chief executive Jan Filochowski expressed his condolences.

"I hope it helps to explain the course of events. I am so sorry a member of staff was not with her when she died," he wrote.

Mrs Elder said it was not only the indignity of her mother's death that had outraged her.

"There was a total lack of care and understanding. No member of staff expressed their condolences and asked if they could do anything to help me. My mother-in-law had to chase up a doctor when we found my mother dead," she said.

Mrs Elder who runs the special needs unit at Middlefield Centre, said she had been so upset by the whole incident that her doctor had signed her off work.

"I am finding the whole situation impossible to come to terms with.

"My mother's funeral was on May 8, and I shouldn't have to be dealing with this now," she said.

"My final memory of my mother is finding her dead in the hospital bed."

Mrs Elder is now waiting to hear whether an independent review will be carried out into the circumstances of the death.

A hospital spokesman said they were unable to comment until they had received the letter from Mrs Elder asking for an independent review.