Three days after Margaret Lamberty was photographed doubled over in agony on a hospital floor, the mother-of-four died of suspected multiple organ failure.

The picture was taken hours before the 45-year-old's family claim she was apparently forced to crawl on her hands and knees along a corridor to beg nurses for painkillers.

Mrs Lamberty's daughter Laura said her mother's cries for help went unheard, after the family returned home when visiting hours finished.

They say staff at University Hospital of North Staffordshire 'abandoned' the mother-of-four before she died in April from a 'treatable condition'.

Mrs Lamberty had a history of blood clots, but her family claim medics failed to carry out the proper tests when she was admitted to hospital with severe stomach pain.

Instead, they say she was left in a side ward for three days before passing away, when suspected clots in her bowel triggered her organs to shutdown.

The family, who are preparing to take legal action against the hospital in Stoke-on-Trent, say Mrs Lamberty was apparently left to lie in blood-stained bed sheets for 24 hours, and was forced to wait half an hour for a nurse after buzzing for help.

Her eldest daughter, Miss Lamberty, 28, claimed: 'My mum was failed by the doctors and the nurses.

'It was horrific for her and the worst thing I have ever had to see. We told the doctors over and over again she suffered from blood clots.

'We are determined to get justice for mum and find out the truth about what happened. No one should go through what she did.'