The NHS: a true story
Saturday, February 19, 2011 at 9:00 The BBC this week reported that the NHS is 'failing to treat elderly with care and respect'.
I'm not sure how the ombudsman can make such a sweeping statement based on so few cases. Nevertheless, I can relate to the story, and here's why.
Ten days before Christmas my father, 80, fell and broke his hip. He was taken to hospital and given a partial hip replacement.
It is normal, I believe, for patients to be sent home within five days of such an operation. My father's situation is not normal. Apart from his age, he had a heart transplant 12 years ago, and for the past two years he has been on dialysis three times a week.
So we didn't expect him home immediately. No-one, however, thought he would still be in hospital nine weeks later. In this instance - and it's not the first time I have witnessed it - the problem is not the initial treatment, it's the aftercare, or the lack of it.
As a result of his accident, which has weakened him considerably, it is difficult for my father to get in and out of bed without the help of at least one trained nurse, and he can only walk very slowly with the aid of a Zimmer frame. Without the regular physiotherapy he was told he would get - and hasn't - his recovery has been painfully slow.
Anyway, the following story speaks volumes. For the past few weeks my father has been sharing a ward with a delightful man called 'Stan' (not his real name). Last week my father made his way, slowly and with the help of his Zimmer frame, to the toilet down the corridor. Somehow he locked himself in and rang the alarm bell.
No response.
He rang it again. Still no response.
Stan, however, did hear it and from his bed bellowed for a nurse to come and help.
No response.
Stan shouted again. Still no response.
Confined to his bed, Stan thought for a moment. And rang the police.
Slightly befuddled, he couldn't remember the name of the hospital, but the police worked it out, contacted the hospital, and eventually someone went to my father's aid.
It sounds funny but that wasn't the end of it. The following day Stan and my father were both given a severe telling off from the person in charge of the ward!
Thankfully, my father is due home on Monday. I shall be keeping my fingers crossed for Stan.
Reader Comments (10)
Sorry Simon,
Shouldn't that have read, that your Dad and Stan gave the person in charge of the ward a severe teeling off. ?
A moving and extremely well written piece, Simon, I wish your father my best. Alas you father's example is not unique. My father is lucky, turning 80 this year and after surviving a triple bypass 5 years ago still goes down to Brooklands museum every Saturday to tinker with real aircraft and has them taxiing up and down the strip. My dad worked for British Airways for 40 years. At 76 he helped rebuild Concord the first passenger version flown from scratch after it was retired from commercial service.
http://nationaldeathservice.blogspot.com/
http://www.brooklandsconcorde.com/
I take it you're incensed enough to put in a strong complaint Simon? I would be.
On radio this morning, following an interview with a lady who is guilt-ridden because she didn't kick up a fuss when her elderly father was dying in a general ward in which, during his final moments, lunch was being served all around, a former chief nurse said that the big problem is that people don't know who to complain to at the time. After the event I suspect that many people don't go through the official complaints procedure becasuse either they're too traumatised or just thankful that their relatives have escaped alive from the NHS.
I saw my sister the day before she died in a filthy NHS unit. The staff seemed indifferent. I've always suspected that doctors really see people as malfunctioning organisms, but I think that this attitude has now spread to nurses who seem to regard themselves as quasi-doctors rather than providers of a crucial aspect of patient care, namely, physical and mental comfort.
Simon, I heard the Ombudsman say in interview that she was aware that the cases that she looked at in depth were by no means atypical.
Simon:
The staff were probably absent from the ward attending Smoking Cessation training which seems to be a priority in the NHS.
My sister in law is a nurse at a home for the elderly. She dreads patients having to be taken to a general hospital. IF they return, they are always malnourished and dehydrated.
The RCN should hang their heads in shame at this story, for this is where much of the problem originates, largely through that organisation’s overly-developed sense of its own self-importance and its distaste for what it clearly feels was the hitherto too-subservient role of their members within patient care. For far, far too long they have guided the nursing profession away from the art of real nursing into the realms of the pseudo-doctor, so that many people leaving training now have only the barest minimum of knowledge about good nursing practice and often significantly less of the genuine caring which is so vital for that practice to be effective.
The nurses who are inflicted upon the general public these days, it seems, are more concerned with their pay scales, their shift patterns or whether or not their hours will interfere with their family or social lives, than the fact that their lack of often the most basic nursing essentials might impact very negatively upon the patients who are reliant upon them. Indeed, those patients and - often - their relatives or friends are viewed as nosy, interfering nuisances who ask too many questions and demand too many things (oh, the impudence!). They see their role not as carers who are there to follow the instructions of doctors, but as decision-makers for whom the gutty, grisly, emptying-of-the-bedpans-type work normally associated with nursing is far beneath them (oh, the humiliation!). And heaven forbid that any patient should actually want to talk to a nurse on anything but the most cursory level (oh, the time-wasting!).
Doctors have had to work very hard to successfully overcome their traditionally poor reputation of being high-handed and aloof; maybe now is the time for nurses to stop hiding behind their traditionally good reputation as the hospitals’ “caring angels.” Every student entering nursing training should, first and foremost, be instructed to look up the word “nurse” in the dictionary. The RCN should perhaps refresh their memories in this direction also.
It's only going to get worse. I suppose in the future Stan would have to phone the GP, or their in-house manager, and hope that they know which hospital the work was contracted to. Of course 'releasing from toilet' may not be specified in the contract so you can't be sure that's going to get the attention needed.
Sadly it is not just the elderly.
My first husband who was terminally ill with cancer and suffering severe difficulty swallowing due to radiation burns to his osoephegus was left with no food because it was too 'inconvenient' to arrange for his meals to be liquidised. I used to take him in McDonalds milkshakes, which he enjoyed immensely, but for which I was always being chastised for by the staff! Finally they sedated him against his wishes where he was left to dehydrate and starve further. When he came out of the sedation after several days, begging for food and water I demanded something be done and eventually a nasal gastric tube was inserted, much to the consultant's horror. Again I was berated for interfering. My husband died 2 weeks later. fortunately at home as I removed from the hospital 'care' as I knew I could look after him better at home.
My father suffered a similar fate and what hurts and distresses me more, even after 9 years, is his being denied his last wish of a smoke. It was too much trouble to get him out of the tiny side room he was in!
This is, sadly, not a new phenomena. In my opinion hospital care has been declining since the old style matrons were removed and replaced with pen pushing, money grabbing 'managers' who wouldn't know what to do with a band-aid!
The NHS is being drained financially by bureaucrats and accountants, who have ruined so many institutions by only be concerned with the bottom line, not the impact their money saving schemes has on the service.
The whole of this country is going the same way and it causes me great despair.
Simon, my best wishes to your father and Stan and I hope that neither need suffer again at the hands of NHS hospitals.
Great story. I think I may try phoning for an ambulance if I catch anyone stealing from my shed in future. The police are always 'too busy'.