Disgusting hospital

I am really sorry that you had that experience. I have had similar experiences this year. The NHS is failing. The ward I was on was dangerous and I also witnessed abuse of an elderly patient.

Following a formal complaint, I received a nicely worded email in which they claimed that the abusive nurse was being offered additional training.

As far as I can tell nothing has changed and I am actually afraid of being inpatient now. This is a major problem as I have several serious long term and life threatening conditions. My plan for any admission is to take food, drink, wet wipes and have my husband stay with me as long as possible if I am in any way incapacitated. I have made him promise not to leave me on my own if I am unconscious or semi conscious.

A student nurse of my acquaintance has explained to me that trained nurses no longer do any basic care. That is all done by the healthcare assistants. If there isn’t an HCA in your bay then you are on your own because the trained staff regard providing care, or food and drink as ‘beneath them’.

It is awful.

I had a hellish experience at John Radcliffe but that was as a child. My mum was a ward sister and thankful she was there. It was filthy, and they brought cereal and plastic a cup of milk. Apparently you could eat the cereal dry and drink the milk or put the milk on, but no other drink. Mum ended up cooking for me and bringing it in for me and other children. It's one of my only childhood memories as it's so clear

Royal preston however were amazing, I have a side room as immunocompromised and the staff and surgeon were incredible. Nice food too

The poor care my late DH got on one ward had nothing to do with understaffing/underfunding. It was just lack of empathy, arrogance and stroppiness.

After 9 days, he was transferred to another ward. Same hospital.

The care there was exemplary and wonderful in every way. He died, but I knew it was coming, and they took so much time and care with him.

I feel, in one period, I saw the very best and the very worst of what the NHS is.

Nothing to do with money though.

Sorry but if you can afford private then do that. A lot of us have health conditions that spend a lot of time in hospital under these conditions but haven’t got the finances to change that. We have no alternative. You’re complaining about something that obviously you’re able to change.

But then you're assuming that every elderly person has someone available to come to help! My mother has been in hospital several times in the last 6 months. She lives overseas, and all her family live on this side of the ocean (hopefully, she will be well enough to move back here soon). We can't just drop our jobs and responsibilities every time she has a hospital stay, to fly overseas and hold her hand! She lives in a country that has similar understaffing problems to the NHS, and we've had to spend a lot of time on the phone to make sure she is looked after: although she doesn't have dementia, she was feeling too ill and weak to advocate for herself sufficiently.

Likewise, I had two short hospital stays this year. I had recently moved to the area, and haven't built up a network of people who would come to visit yet, let alone who might have any sort of feeling of responsibility to come several times a day to make sure a patient isn't neglected! Especially with people who are too ill to advocate for themselves, the system absolutely should not depend on there being a close family member that is able to do it for them. There are many, many vulnerable singletons, especially among the elderly.

I had surgery earlier this week & I am relieved to say that the hospital was fantastic. Unfortunately I was unable to stay in the correct ward as it was full but I was looked after very well & the food was good.

I will do anything to avoid being in a hospital these days. I've never come across so many horrible healthcare professionals as in our local hospital. It feels like a prison sentence when you're in there. I can well believe you're traumatised, OP. I'm so sorry.

I've been admitted recently for urgent care twice, my hospital (large city) is brilliant. Every staff member I encountered was friendly and upbeat.

Its interesting listening to the experiences of the patients I see in the community, who have been discharged from hospital. There are huge differences even in the same relatively small hospital, depending on which ward they have been in. Some seem to be a lot better than others, especially when it comes to the basics and communicating with relatives.
Non of the wards is immune from staffing issues, all the patients mention how busy the staff are, and yet some seem to have a far better ethos when it comes to how they treat the people they are being paid to look after.

@LemonPeonies ha, yep my abiding memory of my time was scrubbing false teeth , mopping up blood etc and emptying those cardboard bed pans all at 7.15 am. It's strange job, in many ways the hardest I've ever worked with some really sad things but also I had some great fun times and it was actually in some ways very satisfying (this is back in late 80s) I remember particular patients really well too.

That is all well and good, but what if there is no family, or family member is working full time, looking after children/disabled relative/elderly parent/has no other help?
When my mother was dying I did my absolute best, but I was 300 miles away, working FT and had caring responsibilities to other family members near me. Wasn't in a position to take a lot of time off work either, so it was a case of driving up and down the motorway on my days off.
The lack of care in the hospital was distressing but I could not get her out of there despite my best efforts negotiating with the medical staff. I still feel terribly guilty, but I don't know what else I could have done.

I was a nurse back in 88 to 90 but left before the end of training as was getting divorced and the shifts were an issue.

Even then my fellow student nurses were a very mixed bunch, some very caring and some really really strange and hard nosed ones. I couldn't quite work out why they had gone into it.

I did have recent experience though of 2 different A&Es - the one here in Bath in early hours of morning was very very busy, but clean and controlled and nice staff. The one in Slough- well I don't know what to say-very grubby, disorganised, saw 2 fights in the car park. Felt like you would catch something just by being there. Toilets, disgusting!!!

I tend to agree with this: when you have a baby or child in hospital, the parent stays with them to ensure that they are cared for and supervised. Perhaps it should be made clear that with elderly people, a level of supervision and attending to is needed by family members. I don't know how responsibilities of nurses are assigned but I imagine if they were to deal with feeding patients then they would have even more limited time to fulfil their nursing duties?

I agree, it is really difficult to discern whether it is reasonable to have PTSD from a hospital stay with the limited amount of information provided. A complaint to PALs would need a sufficient level of detail to be able to evaluate the issues, which this post does not contain.

i always remember someone saying in europe if a member of your family is in hospital, it is up to the family to go in and help, feed them,

I'm an NHS ward sister and I urge any of you who've had bad experiences to please report if not already done so. It's everyone's responsibility to ensure cleanliness of the ward (yes I've scrubbed poo and blood off floors, beds and bathrooms) I've chased cleaners to empty bins, nurses to check obs and give pain meds and I must say it's exhauting trying to get people to do their jobs sometimes. Being in charge the responsibility lies with me for that shift. I know this doesn't always happen and I think it's a mix of ward cultures, laziness, as well as lack of funds/ staff. Time pressures etc. We do need to prioritise life threatening medical issues and the matrons etc are all about patient flow, so wrre trying to Quickly discharge/ move patients to admit new ones. But ultimately someone should have time to sit and assist a patient to eat and drink. I don't have the answers but something needs to be done.

If you can afford it get private health care it's worth it especially if you have a lot of health issues

Do you mean pay for particular treatment or consultations ? You can do that regardless of pre-existing conditions if you have the funds to pay for it.

Private health insurance will not cover existing conditions and will be more limited than you think unless you have very deep pockets. The NHS is broken. Staff are demoralised and stressed and are behaving accordingly. I do blame the Tories

But if you have health issues, you can’t get private health insurance, or much of any other insurance either- life, travel etc.

But if you already "have a lot of health issues", private insurance is unlikely to cover them.

My Dad was admitted to a ward in our county hospital last September. I was shocked at how filthy it was, 8 patients to a bathroom and if someone had an accident, it was just left. There was blood and excrement on the floors/walls. They shut the ward twice in a week - Covid outbreak followed by C Diff infection. As soon as Dad got his tests done and a diagnosis, we discharged him ourselves... with liver cancer, he frankly deserved better. He made us promise that whatever happened he'd never go in there again, and boy we kept that for him.

Just remember that while you're booking yourself in to a shiny BUPA hospital that if you have an issue under anaesthetic, they rarely have ITU facilities and you will end up in an ambulance while they shift you into A & E for them to pick the pieces up. If you're lucky enough to survive the trip. DH nearly didn't.

I am a retired nurse,always dreaded needing to be an in-patient.Earlier this year I was admitted as an Emergency via A and E,the care I got was outstanding during my entire stay.

I don’t know anyone who has had a bad experience at this hospital.It is the small local hospital in Staffordshire.

How did you vote? Hope you're not responsible for this situation by voting for over a decade of austerity.

I think there are a multiplicity of issues here, often only Private Eye details the appalling mismanagement of monies supposedly going to improve the NHS but finding their way into the hands of companies owned by ‘party donors’. Consequently there is a huge infrastructural problem within the Department of Health. How many ministers have there been in the past 14 years? It is woefully short of qualified staff. Brexit has made the position much worse. No organisation and especially one so dependent on staff can function without the right numbers of the properly qualified. It is also saddled with debt because of the disastrous PFI ‘initiative’. The juicy bits of the health service have been sold off to private care providers. We have an ageing population and falling living standards so the demands on the ‘public end’ of the service are immense. We have local authorities who are required by law to care for the elderly and have been defunded by central government since 2009, so our hospitals are full to the brim of people with mental and physical care needs who should be somewhere other than a hospital, but have nowhere to go. Remember Andrew Lansley [now Baron Lansley] and his ‘reforms’, the Health and Social Care Act 2012, the ‘decentralisation and marketisation’ of the NHS? Well it’s all come to pass. People need to acquaint themselves with government policy and the ethos of Britain Unchained. We are moving to a USA style private health care system. We are not moving towards a Spanish or French style system. Every day there is some article in the paper about the failings of the NHS and the ‘I’m going private’ comments. Check out what it is going to cost you to have cover for cancer care, and stroke management treatment or a treatment for a chronic disabling condition such as Parkinson’s or neonatal care for a newborn, because this will be a private tax you will have to pay if things go the way of the States…..but then everyone who voted for these things knows that don't they?

Many thanks!