To ask to speak to a doctor ?

This, the hospital with have a dedicated room/office for PALS. Go there!

OP, I hope as this is Tuesday that you are getting some joy . I’m a hospital consultant and would say that your brother is getting apalling care. If you don’t get any joy from speaking to the ward manager to arrange a meeting with the consultant, physically go to the PALS office and say that you are invoking Martha’s rule.

It's just click bait, don't rise to it

Rubbish. On both counts.

Anyone can put in a concern or a complaint, not all staff are lazy and pointless but guess you've never used the nhs and are just looking for a reaction to your pointless post.

She'll need his permission to put a complaint in and he's not got capacity to do that at present

The NHS is a joke and everyone who works for them are lazy and pointless in my opinion

What hospital is this please

Just so I know to avoid it

Judging by the lack of care and support this poor guy is NOT in the best place

Ask if the hospital have ‘Clinical Site Managers’. Ours do. These are senior nurses that troubleshot. They work across the whole hospital and step in when there’s problems.

We’ve used them when ward staff aren’t qualified to give certain iv medication or no one there to put a cannula in. They have a massive amount of authority and really kick ass.

Ours have their own office and contact details, and you can go direct (don’t need ward staff to refer you).

They are the only team available 24/7. Especially, as you realise hospitals practically close down weekends and more so, bank holidays.

I really wish you luck, it’s awful feeling so powerless watching a loved one decline.

I guess a remote review is better than no review but it's still not enough, hopefully the nurses are closely monitoring him and he gets a senior review. I've seen so many similar instances, it's a lousy situation and it's the patients who suffer and the nurses and juniors who get the stress and frustration trying their best for their patients.

I would be escalating NOW

Right now. Emails to PALS and also the ward manager, who is a good person to be in contact with rather than just the nurses. There should be assessment on his mobility and his ability to feed himself / food textures etc. Ask for SALT and OT and physio assessments as he isn't able to achieve basic functions independently. He's declining and the delays are a barrier to him receiving necessary treatment. Start looking up nice guidelines. You can't leave this any longer

This isn't a good scenario, and it is clearly necessary to advocate for your brother.

As a life long people pleaser who would like to make things happen with polite dialogue, I understand your hesitance. But if doctors aren't around, and you aren't meeting them on ward rounds, you need to be taking another approach

I worked in hospital comms and most trusts (even if they don’t bother having doctors) will have some comms person monitoring social media over the weekend. Once I ended up phoning the ward making sure someone with celiac who’d been left without appropriate food was fed when her friend named and shamed on Twitter. Trusts hate bad publicity.

i honestly can’t comprehend why someone with potentially grade 3/4 HE hasn’t had a senior review. I’m sorry you are witnessing this.
Are they treating anything? Is he on antibiotics?
I get staff are busy but 1st presentation decomp’s are not the patients that can wait for concrete plans to be put into place. This is not me criticising you OP, but the staff supposedly taking care of them should also be advocating for him. Where I work if I have concerns I raise them, if I feel I’m not being listened to I go higher.

Its not just about a discussion with a relative, if he's clearly deteriorating and is becoming drowsy then he needs an urgent review. It's usually the nurses who hopefully notice, escalate to the doctor and monitor the patient, if youre lucky they will contact the outreach team if the doctors are busy .

The hospital has to do the tests to prove and admit treatment. You're able to provide information and request but they can't go off word of mouth. Hopefully they will listen to you, check his history and be able to do as you advise. Xx

Please write a detailed timeline of every conversation and concern you've had, including anything you remember about his condition at each point. This is really concerning and it's sounds like he is being dreadfully let down. It's not the nurses fault per se, but they also have a responsibility to pass on any necessary information to the doctors about their patients and that may not be happening properly here (it also may be but the doctors just aren't prioritising it, it all depends on what info is being relayed about his state).

I would ask the nurses to be documenting your exact concerns and request to speak to a doctor every single time so that it is appearing in his record.

Doctors don't give permission to nurses to put fluids up, they are supposed to review the patient, look at obs, check-if they need bloods, fluids, medication then review again or at least act on any abnormal findings.

Why was he admitted to hospital, patients can have treatment without a scan. Have they got a diagnosis yet.

When ds was very ill a couple of years ago dd1 insisted I asked for an urgent review by a doctor as she was concerned the sepsis pathway was not being followed. After multiple requests the doctor came, was absolutely horrified with ds's condition and treatment and actually put a treatment plan in operation.

@darksideofthetoon my late db was a functioning alcoholic, owned his own home etc and I think the negligence of our gp contributed to his death at the age of 57. Dm has had the MP involved and lots of meetings with the surgery so we hope others are given the right treatment regardless of their other issues. Db didn't want to die!

Having lost someone to alcohol related liver disease they should be giving him detox drugs to stop him having withdrawal seizures, pabrinex infusions to prevent Wernickes encephalopathy & trying to feed him up. If he has ascites they may consider doing drains & he would need albumin infusions.

In our Trust a Consultant in virtually every specialty has to be physically present in the hospital 7 days a week. There’s definitely a Gastro Consultant in, they do have two hospitals to cover here, so it’s the morning in one, then over to other for the afternoon.

There will be a Consultant on call. The Registrar on duty may be reluctant to call them (on a sunny bank holiday) but they have to.
Unfortunately you may have to raise the risk of them not doing anything by documenting and being clear you are documenting everything, so if there is an ‘unexpected death’ you can take ‘appropriate legal action’. It sounds unfair and difficult but may be the only way to get people moving.
(yes, I work in the NHS)