I felt quite sad for the old ladies last time I stayed in. One in particular all the staff thought she was a troublemaker but actually from the other side of the ward, seeing the whole story, the poor woman was just extremely confused and frustrated.
She was hard of hearing but there didn't seem to be anything explaining this as none of the staff seemed to be aware. So when they turned around and answered a question facing away from her, she thought they were ignoring her/being rude and would shout back at them, which made them think she was rude. She did keep repeating the same question which I appreciate is wearing but she didn't seem aware that she'd already had an answer. In several cases I'm quite sure she actually hadn't heard it. She kept demanding cups of tea which never turned up, which seemed quite reasonable from both sides (overworked staff with no time to run around making tea; OTOH she seemed unaware of this problem and wanted to know why they kept promising her things they weren't delivering). She asked if she could have her cereal microwaved, which, again, I know they don't have time to do things like that for everyone who requests it but they were really short when refusing, and I don't think it was terrible of her to ask. And then they started moving beds around in the middle of the night which was alarming enough but nobody explained to her what was happening and the poor woman was frantic thinking she was being taken away somewhere. She kept shouting "You can't do this!" "Somebody call the police!" and the porters just laughed at her. Then when nobody would (could?) take her to the toilet she half climbed, half fell out of bed and pissed on the floor, which just seemed to annoy everyone even further.
I just thought it was sad, I don't think she was making hugely unreasonable demands and they kept reacting to her confusion and frustration as though she was just being difficult on purpose. I'm sure they see a lot on the short term wards but it just really highlighted how stretched the nurses etc are. They were perfectly polite and friendly and reassuring towards me but I was a fairly easy patient. It seemed really clear that although they probably would have had empathy had they been aware of the full story they just literally didn't have the time or space to be aware.
Another lady in the bed next to me had awful eczema and asked if they could put a little cream on the worst part of her legs because she couldn't reach them, and was told (sympathetically) that they didn't have time. She was lucky that day because a HCA came along shortly afterwards and when she asked her, she did have time and was able to spend quite a while rubbing cream into the lady's arms and legs and the relief on her face was quite heartbreaking.
I'm scared of getting old :(