Woman evicted from NHS hospital ward after being stuck for 18 months

[SerendipityJane]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c897ew0ekp4o

Not everyone with EUPD has autism.

FFS the armchair diagnosis on this site is getting ridiculous.

Obviously an extremely complex and distressing case, which the media can only report to some extent.

My immediate thoughts are with the ward staff and the ward patients.

I also wonder if this is one of those extreme cases that could lead to a change in legislation around what constitutes mental capacity?

Clearly this lady has such extreme mental health issues that she can’t act in her own best interests. I genuinely believe that staying on that hospital ward was not in her best interests.

If I think beyond the immediate negative impact to those around her, I think it is very likely that this woman suffered some terrible abuse and perhaps remains in an incredibly toxic relationship with her mother. What a tragic life and very sad.

Oh, please. There is a chasm between boasting and screaming loudly. It wasn't a loaded choice of word. It was likely an accurate description of what happened.

What would re-tendering have achieved though? If the hospital tried over 120 providers, they must have approached everyone suitable within a reasonable radius. Could the court have compelled providers to offer her places so she had some unsuitable options to choose from?

While I share your views on private sector care provision and wish the cash could once again be redirected "in house", the providers also have a responsibility to their existing vulnerable residents and staff.

The article says that since her move from hospital, the police have been called 3 times, once by her and twice by staff. She is a younger person and has been violent. Any provider has to weigh up whether they can give the care she needs and also keep their other residents safe, because her rights do not outweigh theirs.

Before anyone says "she's bedbound/a wheelchair user" we know nothing about her actual level of physical ability/mobility and physical health issues.

Hmm, I suspect her behaviour was very challenging. As I a nurse I can only imagine how stressful this would be for the staff in the ward.

This case sounds horrific for all
involved. Over 100 placements not suitable perhaps suggests significant self harm which is hard to manage I know.

I haven’t yet met anyone with a diagnosis of BPD/EUPD/C-PTSD who hasn’t experienced extensive and severe childhood abuse. Poor woman. I guess she felt safe and cared for in hospital. I hope she gets the care and connection she needs in this new placement.

Boast is the only word that sums up how this woman would tell anyone within her proximity that she would stay as long as she liked. She was very, very proud that 'nobody could touch her because of her mental health'.

Please, take it from me - she was clever, manipulating and bone-chillingly smug. And she made a lot of people's lives an utter misery.

She will self harm to the point she'll be readmitted to hospital.

The private care provider says how much it will cost to accommodate her, including if they have to lease a building, hire and train staff, etc. They submit that bid. Many bids will be way out of cost restraints. Others might be acceptable to the people funding the care.

Look at other organisations that provide a public service (and social care is a public service).

• Royal Mail have a universal delivery obligation, which is why RM deliver to Highlands and Islands, Scilly Isles, etc when many couriers refuse to. What I'm suggesting as a transitional demand is that private social care providers have to offer care to all patients.
• The NHS have national rules as to when "expensive treatment" becomes "too expensive" Yet private care providers can pick and choose what to offer and turn down complex patients in favour of cheap and easy patients, and we've seen in this case how the NHS ends up picking up the bill for that. Again, a universal obligation to tender would prevent this cherry-picking of cases.

Social care should be nationalised, that's the definitive solution to stopping this cherrypicking, ending bedblocking (because it's all Govt money being spent, the Govt can increase social care places to accommodate people being discharged from hospital), and will also stop our taxes from ending up in the pockets of these care providers' shareholders.

I think the case raises questions about how we manage conflicts of rights. This lady might have a 'right' to be looked after and cared for appropriately but patients on the ward also have a right to recover in peace and some patients would have been denied treatment and help as a result of her bed blocking. Her needs don't trump everybody else's because she is happy to cause as much trouble as humanly possible and won't respond to reason.

Ultimately this could mean she is left with insufficient care and this will detriment her but we have to see that allowing her to do what she wants (bed block) leads to others not having their needs met. It's not about fault but about achieving the best outcome for the most people. This woman will literally bleed the NHS and social care dry whilst so many people who don't dare kick up such a fuss are effectively neglected and abandoned by a system that simply will never have sufficient resource to deal with people like this lady.

I don't have the answer either but it seems illogical to offer people hospital treatment then chuck them out into the streets. And adult social care are well known for making their starting offer an unacceptable one in the hope you'll take it. Maybe we do have to accept that difficult cases take longer to find suitable solutions for?

1. People have usually have one or the other, not both.
2. Acknowledging the appalling EUPD misdiagnosis rate for autistic women isn't "armchair diagnosing", it's raising a possibility based on population-level data.

Considering that she's unlikely to leave her bed if placed there I don't see the opportunity for being traumatised.

"Manipulative" is a common slur applied to EUPD patients.

Someone who is willing to cut themselves open is, by definition, mentally-ill. No sane person does that.

But you said you had a hypothesis that she had misdiagnosed autism - that is not population level data, that is making an assumption based on the (very limited) information that is in the public domain, unless you know her personally?

You simply can’t assume that everyone who has been professionally diagnosed with EUPD has autism.

My ward manager would never have allowed that much clutter. I'm amazed that Ward did. It's blocking the oxygen and suction!

What makes you think that? In the hospital, she had to stay put to stop her bed from being taken back. Where she's gone to, she won't have that concern.

If she never leaves her bed, why does she have a wheelchair?

It wasn’t her bed. It didn’t belong to her.

I would also confidently assume that a woman and her mother who refused to vacate a medical ward due to the complex mental health needs of the woman, have imput from all authorities possible in order to get her the top level of social care offered (24 hour independent living care is the most costly package - that she was offered and declined) have also exhausted all routes of any diagnosis they can get for her to support their claim for a need for the highest level of care. Social care alone generally amounts to 18 hours of care per week, she must have been assessed by CHC for 24 hour care in an independent living facility.

Completely agree it's not a good place for it to be from a hygiene and safety point of view.

If you want to listen to loud music wear headphones. If you don't want to wear headphones - no loud music. Show some consideration for ALL the other patients on the ward.

You miss my point, which is that "I'm not leaving this place" can have a whole array of emotions motivating it, only one of which is boastful pride.

Yes, but Zone2 has just explained to you that that is unenforceable if the patient doesn't want to comply.

Remember that this is Mumsnet where people are ''diagnosed'' all the time by non professionals.

No veterinarian would diagnose an animals illness , or GP on looking at someone's tat in a picture, or their behaviour according to a press article.

The woman has a mass of snacks in the picture, most likely as that is what the hospital shop sells.

No where else ''diagnoses'' like this, it's a strange mumsnet obsession.

{The more acronym based, the better}