Hospital with DM - unbelievable!

[BumpingFuglies]

Am disgusted with today's events. DM had suspected stroke this morn. Ambulance arrived promptly, DM and my step Dad go off to hospital.
I go ahead in car.

DM waits 4 HOURS to see doc who orders CT scan. Waits a further 3 HOURS to be told scan does not show stroke. DM very distressed. Her eyes are pointing in opposite directions. She can't see.

Meantime, there is a man calling for help in side room. 2 nurses and 2 HCA's walk past and ignore. Finally a doctor goes in, hearing the man's cry for help. This is in A&E.

DM is moved to another area (ESS I think). There is an elderly lady who needs a wee. She has been calling for about 15 mins. Patient in next bed (in gown) brings her the bed pan and shuts curtains. Lady does wee and tells other patient she has finished. Patient in gown goes looking for staff member, after pressing the call button. 15 mins pass. Finally a nurse comes in and patient says "the lady has finished". Nurse replies "I only have one pair of hands". Meanwhile elderly lady is stuck on bed pan.

I'm fucked off to fuck with my DM's experience and that of other patients.

To top it all off a nurse pops in to DM's cubicle and says "I'm here to do your catheter". Staff had been trying to get a catheter into the lady in the next cubicle. I said, very quietly, that I thought it may be the lady next door. Nurse storms out and says "I will decide that!".

??????

things have changed had it been now my mil had her stroke it would have been treated so differenty,this was 10yrs ago,please go back and demand help x

CT scan has not shown anything indicating stroke, I'm told. But there is no exp for her eyes. She is under doc at another hosp for another condition, so hope to get her there tomorrow.

Sorry all to hear these awful stories

It sounds like a problem with the facial nerves. What other conditions does she have?

My mum was dying of cancer when she managed to fracture her collarbone, so she was taken to hospital by ambulance (she was bed bound). They put her arm in a sling and then said they'd get an ambulance to take her home. This was at about 11am.

They waited until 11pm to tell my dad that no ambulance was coming, they also refused her painkillers as dad hadn't had a chance to grab her ones at home.

Turns out they never bothered to book her an ambulance at all. She didn't get to go home until 5pm the next day.

LadySybil - she had a rhinectomy 4 years ago. MaxFax doctor thinks this is not nerve related, because of eye movement. He thinks muscular or "palsy".

Thanks so much all for your input. I'm shattered and must sleep, but please keep posting, thanks

My DM has had a similar thing happen - it was around the time when the stroke awareness adverts were first on (the"Act FAST" ones) and my DM had slurred speech, a slight facial droop on one side and slight weakness in her arm on the same side as her facial droop, so my DSis took her to A&E.

They were kept waiting for 8 hours only to be told it probably was a stroke but they had to do an MRI. Only they couldn't do the MRI for 10 days as that was when the next available appointment was. So much for acting fast . Luckily she didn't have any lasting effects.

Hope things work out well for your DM Bumping

Sounds like she needs a neurology/neuro opthamology consultant. It's the nerves which send the messages to the muscles IIRC.

Normal CT does not exclude stroke, especially acutely.
These days stroke is a medical emergency and suspected strokes are usually taken straight to specialist centres, or transferred there if the person presents to a non-specialist hospital.
There are many conditions that can cause eye movements to be wonky; not all are strokes.
Needs further investigation by a neurologist.

In A&E I would say (not excusing your description of events, but...) side rooms are often used for recovering drunks, usually frequent attenders and known to the department. Nurse often have particular areas of responsibility and have to concentrate on those patients. Nurses can only do a certain number of things at once, and if they're understaffed and someone's ill at the other end of the ward, then there really might not be anyone free to come.
Just playing devil's advocate (and some of it is indefensible)...
I'm not a nurse, btw.

Sorry to hear about all these bad experiences.

I work on an Acute Medical Care of the Elderly ward, have been there for 10 years. Sadly it doesn't surprise me to hear these stories. I've seen such a change in care during the last 10 years that myself and my colleagues speak about it all the time.

Whilst im not defending the nurses concerned in your experiences as I wasn't there but there are so many reasons/obstacles that we're up against it does make nursing sick patients extremely hard.

Unfortunately there are lazy nurses, the big issue with that is the good nurses are left to pick up the pieces, same with Doctors, so they can be a bit snappy due to tiredness and stress. We've all been reduced to tears on many occasions.
There is always talk about trying to reduce the amount of paperwork but we've just seen more and more being introduced, Even the HCA's have paperwork now, it just takes away the time spent with patients.

Sometimes we cannot get to a patient within a reasonable amount of time for various reasons, alot of the time we have a queue of patients waiting for the toilet. These can often require 2 members of staff to assist the patient so you can imagine how long the wait can be. If someone is very unwell the priority is to attend to those for obvious reasons. Unfortunately that means the rest have to wait.
We have 8 members of staff for the morning shift, thats to wash and dress plus all the medical attention needed. 6 staff for the evening, then 4 staff for the night shift. This is a 30 bedded ward, over half of these patients have dementia/acute confusion/high risk of falling/physical aggression/wandering/absconding. I've counted 25 at one point.

And it's getting worse.......