A FIFE man has threatened legal action after he claims his father was left bleeding into his brain for five hours at Victoria Hospital.

Ronald Gear, 52, says his 81-year-old dad, of the same name, had fallen and knocked his head after a night playing bingo with his friend.

He was admitted to the Kirkcaldy facility at 2.30am on February 13 but Ronald says he and the rest of his family were not informed of the incident until 7.30am.

By that time his father had already been incubated and was to be sent for surgery in Edinburgh, where he died four days later.

But Ronald believes that, had the doctors and nurses working the night shifted acted sooner, his dad could have survived.

He told the Times: "I'd give everything I have for him to still be alive and they had a chance to save him and they just didn't bother.

"It took the day doctor all of five minutes to find my number and he called me but by that point they'd already knocked him out with drugs and incubated him ready to be transported for surgery.

"Apparently, if they had done that in the first hour of getting him, there's a chance he would have lived.

"All the stress on his body while sitting there for several hours while slowly bleeding into his brain caused it to get much, much worse."

He says that, having obtaining his medical notes, his dad's pupil had blown and he had suffered a mid-line shift, when the brain moves past its centre line.

Ronald continued:"I'm not a medical expert but my partner happens to be a nurse and keeps telling me the things they should have done.

"They should have checked him every 15 minutes when he first came in, should have flagged up all these red flags.

"He sat there for hours, alone, bleeding into his brain, while they did nothing and waited for the day staff to come on so they could say, 'there you go, there's an old man, you deal with it now'.

"None of this happened in seconds, this all took hours to happen, but it's because they just didn't care.

"The impression I got was they thought, 'We're busy, he's an old man, just let him die'."

He now wants the doctor who first assessed his dad - who decided he should be left - to be held responsible and has submitted a Stage 2 complaint to NHS Fife, the most serious form of complaint.

He has also sought legal advice.

"Nobody is being held accountable, I don't want some low-level nurse who was rushed off her feet to be held accountable," Ronald said.

"The doctor said to leave him for four hours, that's in the medical notes, he was pretty much a goner by that point.

"Instead of doing what they're paid to do, instead of doing what their guidelines say they should do, they thought, 'He's an old man, he's had a fall, screw him and he'll be fine by morning'.

He added: "It was just a quiet night down the pub playing bingo with a friend then he slips and falls and he could be alive today but they thought he wasn't worth the trouble.

"He wasn't failing, he was quite an active 81-year-old, there was no particular reason for it, anyone can slip and fall.

"I'd like to think if I slipped and fell after coming out of the pub they wouldn't just write me off, but they probably would.

"I don't want to go anywhere near that hospital, there's that old joke about people die in hospitals, I didn't realise they actually went out of their way to make sure they did.

"If something happens to me I will be asking to be taken to Edinburgh, don't take me to Victoria Hospital."

Ronald, who lives near the hospital in Kirkcaldy, says he couldn't fault his father's care in Edinburgh, where he died on February 17, explaining "that's how a hospital should be run".

He said: "By the time I saw him he was incubated and ready to go because he had deteriorated that much - nobody noticed that?

"I don't believe that, they just ignored him.

"He never woke up after that, I never got to see my father or speak to my father again."

Director of Nursing, Janette Keenan, said: “I would like to offer our most sincere condolences to the family of Mr Gear on the loss of their loved one.

"We are unable to comment on the specifics of the Mr Gear’s care for reasons of confidentiality.

"We can confirm, however, that we remain in dialogue with the family to discuss and explore their concerns fully.”