To be disgusted about the treatment of elderly in hospital?

[happilyeverafta]

I’m currently in hospital and on a orthopedic ward where I’m the only patient under 70 (I believe, I’m 35)

The 5 elderly ladies here have varying degrees of ‘illness’ and as far as I can tell none are suffering from dementia just poorly ladies, bless them.

I arrived here last night and the welcome I received was as if David Beckham (insert other celeb crush if required) had walked into the ward swinging his todger around - they were all saying how great it was to have a ‘youngster’ for once. They also added I wasn’t likely to moan or ask for stuff....

The lady in the bed next to me has horrific facial injuries and covered in bruises. She’s 82. She started chatting to me and we had a lovely conversation (I will admit now I’m a sucker for a Nan type figure!). She’s clearly very sore and scared, nurses told me she’d been beaten up in her own home and thrown down the stairs and “to watch out as she screams out in the night due to be scared/nightmares” all days whilst rolling their eyes at me.

Last night she asked for some water and the nurse shouted at her that “you have half a cup we are busy so stop mythering” she explained Ste was very thirsty. In the end I gave her my hug as she was getting distressed.

This morning she was asleep as the nurses arrived on shift - they came in and shook her & shouted to wake her which frightened her she started crying, I then witnessed them rolling their eyes st her talking about her to each other in front of her abs laughing at her, the whole time she is looking at me saying “I think they think I can’t hear or understand them”

They then got her dressed and she was in pain and asking them to be a bit gentler they came from behind the curtain stating she’d made “another Oscar winning performance” and huffing and puffing. Insinuating she’s making it all up.

They then chat to each other in the middle of the ward about how she’s getting worse, clearly has woke up in a mood etc etc.

Aibu or is this how bad the NHS is now with the treatment of patients?! I’m sat here upset and shocked - I’ve not had any obs done or had anyone come to check on me. To be fair I’m ‘OK’ compared to these ladies but they seem so stretched for staff (1 nurse abs about 3 HCA) that the basic level of care and compassion has gone? Or is this how it is on an orthopedic ward?

The story of nurses being short staffed and overstretched is becoming a bit of a farce. Rolling their eyes and being sarcastic doesn't get the job done any quicker.

Yes I'm very familiar with the contempt shown to old ladies, I've seen it many times when my mother ended up in hospital.

Oddly enough my dad was admitted to hospital many times also and the mostly female nurses treated the old men on the wards as if they were returning heroes. Complete opposite.

I hope I can't afford a ticket to Dignitas to avoid hospital when I'm old. I dread it.

Unfortunately a lot of the caring is done by untrained people. Trouble is, the work is not glamorous or aspirational. That means that you get people doing those jobs when they couldn't do other things. "Skill mix" by having more untrained staff does lead to worse care. But its too expensive to provide proper nurses.

I bloody love you happilyeverafta - thank you so much for standing up for these ladies!

Ha ha Jampasty

All ok here, 2 snoring away and thank god for WIFI!

Well done OP, its amazing how these understaffed hospitals can manage to buck their ideas up when threatened with being reported, but extremely sad you should have to see and that this happened in the first place. Disgusting.

I had a short stay in hospital a couple of years ago, and the level of professionalism of some of the HCAs was not on. At least two of them spent too much time gossiping in their native language and ignoring patients of all ages. In my bay there was a very young woman, me in my late 30s, both of us recovering from orthopaedic surgery. Then there was a 50ish woman who'd had a mastectomy and a very elderly woman with a broken hip. The middle-aged lady had a row with the HCAs when they wouldn't change her bedding and kept ignoring everyone. They took little to no notice of the very old lady.

One of the RGNs was grumpy but efficient with most of us, but she wasn't interested in the old lady. The other nurses seemed quite fond of her though. There were some really good nurses on that ward.

I worked in the health service most of my life - now retired.

There used to be staff nurses and sisters/charge nurses who were fully qualified; and SENs (state enrolled nurses|) who had a lesser qualification and were there to attend to the patients' well-being and comfort rather than injections, drug rounds etc. These SENs were wonderful.

The quality of the ward sister was critical - as a patient I can say that the whole atmosphere of the ward would change when a good sister came on the ward - there was a palpable sense of relief among the patients.

They tend to go for the people with no family or visitors and then pretend to be saintly in front of the patients who have family sat round
This is exactly the reason I'd like to be an advocate for vulnerable people like this in hospital. They need people to fight their corner.

Hoppinggreen, you may not be proud of what you did but I think you did the right thing.
Well done happilyeverafta. Awful that it took you saying you'd recorded the abuse before you were taken seriously. In other words, they aren't bothered unless there's evidence that shows them up.

He couldn't feed himself and food was laid out for him and then taken away untouched for days before we realised what was going on
My late Mum witnessed the same. An elderly woman needed help eating yet the staff would just put her meals in front of her and take them away uneaten. She was wasting away, literally starving to death in a hospital bed!

Unfortunately a lot of the caring is done by untrained people. Trouble is, the work is not glamorous or aspirational. That means that you get people doing those jobs when they couldn't do other things. "Skill mix" by having more untrained staff does lead to worse care. But its too expensive to provide proper nurses.

Indeed. It is well known (and has been since Florence Nightingale was running her statistical analysis) that less-trained nurses lead to worse patient outcomes on every level. Delegating the practical aspects of nursing to untrained staff is a false economy. It means that a lot of things get missed. But nobody wants to pay to staff a ward full of trained nurses.

Yes I'm very familiar with the contempt shown to old ladies, I've seen it many times when my mother ended up in hospital.

Oddly enough my dad was admitted to hospital many times also and the mostly female nurses treated the old men on the wards as if they were returning heroes. Complete opposite.

I've never noticed this, but now you've pointed it out, I think you're completely correct. There is more contempt shown to old ladies.

Well done, OP. Hope you're feeling better and you sleep well tonight.

Plenty of oramorph makes me verybtwppy

Well done!

Plenty of oramorph makes me verybtwppy

Oh I had oramorph for 4 days when I was in hospital. I loooooved it. I had not a care in the world.

I don't have kids, nor do my siblings, so I have every intention of doing away with myself before I need this sort of 'care' as there'll be no one there to advocate for me / being me food etc! (Mind you I'm disabled so it's quite possible the tories will have done away with me before I get to that age!)

Well done, OP, for taking a stand. I have had problems with lack of nursing care for my elderly parents when they were in hospital too. My mother is a retired nurse and was horrified at the treatment my father had. She also knew that she was not being cared for properly when she was a patient.

Even basic things like not putting water within the reach of a patient or ensuring that someone needing help to eat gets that help are inexcusable but seem to be common occurrences, and not restricted to elderly patients either in my experience - I remember just a few hours after my c-section having water and my drugs placed out of my reach when I was still unable to move and catheterised into the bargain. (Oh, and trying to deal with a newborn on my own too....)

The comments about elderly women being treated worse than men are interesting. I wonder if there is common reason linking the poor treatment by some nurses of elderly women and the poor treatment by some nurses of women on post-natal wards...

Don't just speak to PALS. Ask to speak to the ward sister who's in charge of it. I'd be fuming if any of the nurses I worked with spoke about my patients like that.

Please, please report this. Ask to speak directly to the Matron and PALS representative. Speaking as a current nurse, these give those of us who do care a bad name we need people who witness abuse (and that's what this is) to escalate it

My dad had similar treatment when he was just weeks away from death but mentally he was really alert. They kept giving him large doses of morphine, presumably to knock him out as he was in agony. Then they'd take the piss when he hallucinatrd it was lucky he had relatives visit as other patients had it much worse.

Thankfully we were able to get him moved to a hospice where he was cared for humanely and compassionately until his death.

A few years ago after a bad fall downstairs I was in a similar situation (I was the youngest on the ward by around 20-25 years). Some ladies were in their 90s and one was 101. All were in with broken bones.

I found myself helping them out in small ways because the staff were over stretched but the thing that struck me was that while most of the HCAs were terrific, there were two real bitches who were senior nurses. How they ever thought it was a good career choice with their total lack of empathy I cannot imagine.

One lady in her 70s, who also had Parkinson's Disease,had been in the hospital previously and following a complaint from her family, had not been treated well. When she had to return, her adult children devised a rota to make sure that someone was there morning and evening to ensure she was bathed and dressed properly.

I saw enough there to make me feel concerned at the thought of being old and having to go into hospital.

I could write a book on the things I've seen on adult wards - male and female.
My DD who had learning and physical disabilities was admitted to these wards once she turned 18. I refused to leave her there on her own. Someone - either me, DH or our own paid carers were at her bedside 24/7 often for 2 weeks at a time. I witnessed the male ward as we were given a side room at one point which looked directly onto a 6 bedded male bay. During other admissions we were on 6 bedded female bays where most of the patients were geriatric and some had dementia. It seemed to be the job of the capable patients to call staff for those who were incapable of calling for help for themselves. I saw patients suffer injuries as a result of correct protocols not followed - one patient fell and broke a hip and another suffered an inury which required medical treatment as he walked away from his bed still attached to something. I heard the nurse say "I didn't even know he could walk"

Call buzzers were regularly unanswered. One old lady had been plonked in a chair and said she felt dizzy. No one came when she pressed the buzzer to be helped back into bed - until the lady in the bed opposite went to help - then the staff miraculously appeared.

One nurse made it quite clear that I was not welcome on her ward - clearly didn't want anyone witnessing what was going on, whilst I was saving them a shed load of work by caring for my DD myself including doing her masses of medication which it would have taken them ages to do as they were unfamiliar with it, all her feeds, changing incontinence pads and washing and dressing her. I'd dread to think what state she'd have been in if it had been left to the staff on the ward. I drew the line the day the HCA's threw the clean sheets at the end of the bed and walked off. Changing a bed of a patient who is immobile, very ill and attached to drips etc is certainly not a 1 person job.

The ward was crawling with agency staff who didn't have the competencies to carry out some of the duties they needed to do, putting extra pressure on the qualified nurses who did and leading to essential medical treatments being delayed.

DDs last 2 hospital stays were at a different hospital - a hospital where they did not know her, had no file on her. The care and treatment we received there was totally different. Staff were proactive, they worked as a team, they were proud of their ward. All patients who were capable of getting to the bathroom had a shower every day not a cat's lick. Those capable of getting to the toilet were taken to the toilet not shoved on a commode - they were the ward rules. You wouldn't believe that both hospitals were NHS they were so different.

In an emergency the NHS is the finest in the land but sadly once you are past that critical stage the picture is often very different.

Well done OP for reporting this unacceptable behaviour.

Report to the CQC?

Glad you reported it op. It's the silence that allows this to continue.

CQC do not have a remit to investigate individual concerns. It’s worth going to their website and recording the concerns as it might add to other concerns and show a trend.
Ask to speak to the band 8 responsible for the ward. Inform them about the poor care and say you expect immediate improvement otherwise you will consider direct referral to the NMC for the nurses involved and their managers.
Bad things happen when good people do nothing. There are some excellent hospitals, very good wards and lots of elderly people receiving kind and compassionate care. The majority in fact.

I’m so sad to read this. I am a doctor on a ward where most of our patients are elderly. The nurses are kind and compassionate and we chat to and joke with patients and ask what is troubling people. Not all NHS wards are like this!

Nice to find out that I'm probably a rubbish nurse as I trained before degrees!
Seriously though everyone who is not happy with their care should report it,how many people here actually reported it in writing?
As nurses we do complain about shirt staffing but just have to get on with it .
Many years ago in my first job I reported bad care,l would now be called a whistle blower,and my life was made hell until I moved hospitals.Patients and relatives must complain or nothing changes.The CQC also look at how many complaints hospitals are getting.
As for the poster who got more and better nurses after recording you have to ask yourself what how are the wards the staff were moved from faring?
The removal of bursarys unfortunately means that more mature people with families and life experience will no longer be looking at nursing,we have less people applying and the drop out rate is appealing.Nurse apprentices courses are starting,so many of the health care assistants will be doing this at first,in their own hospitals but this may not mean an increase of staff on the wards.
Many of us are out their treading water,doing our best but going home knowing we could have done better with more time,this is why many trained nurses are leaving,why we come in when we're not well ourselves.
There should be somewhere on the ward information about complaints procedure if you have no joy from the ward sister.If not it will definitely be on the hospital web site.
Hope you get well soon OP.