My grandma - no beds

[Ijustdontknowanything]

My grandma was told by a visiting SW yesterday to go to hospital, because she is in a lot of pain, cannot look after herself etc.

Long story short, the hospital doesn't have any beds, so when I called at 11pm to check on her, I discovered she was going to have to spend the night sitting in her argos wheelchair with no headrest in a waiting room. She can't walk or get to the toilet herself.

We can't bring her home as apparently SS would consider this to be us saying we can look after her instead, but she needs full time care, and apparently she can't be discharged anyway until she has had a load of tests. They aren't going to happen overnight though.

I'm so upset that she was admitted to a hospital that doesn't have a bed, why couldn't they have said so at 5pm and sent her to a bigger hospital? If she falls from the chair overnight, well I dread to think. And here I am lying in a nice cosy bed.

Is this normal?

The problem is, the doctor didn't get to her until midnight, and now she is waiting for a barrage of tests and scans. She is unable to come home.

That's absolutely terrible. I'd be wheeling her out there and taking her home. Can't imagine who in God's name would think this is going to help her health.

Has the sw advised you start looking at long term options like care homes? Are people saying can't go home permanently or more needing rehab on a short term basis?
Does GM have mental capacity, does she want to move to a care home?

I hope she's okay ❤️

No op, I'm not a SW, just speaking from experience of managing the steady decline in their 80s and 90s of my parents and in-laws. My MIL was the last to die, very recently. She has been in and out of hospital this year and none of those admissions took place before a home visit from her gp. On each occasion, although we could have driven her, because of her frailty and various medical conditions, advice from her gp was always that she be taken to hospital by ambulance. In some cases we waited up to 10 hours for an ambulance, but it meant she waited in her own bed. And also the paramedics would check her over to make sure she really needed to be admitted.

I'm so sorry to hear what your grandma is going through. It's truly heartbreaking to think of a 95 year old being treated in such an appalling fashion. I hope she gets some proper care very soon.

She has mental capacity yes. Yes I think she is willing to go to a care home but she is in so much pain it needs to bee treated.

There is no care in the community there is no care home places there are no hospital beds for social patients, we as a country have lost the art of looking after our old folk

Totally agree we treat our elderly shockingly but the Tories don't need to worry it won't be them or theirs. This is an awful situation, it would seem to me she would be better at home with someone medical coming to assess her, and the SW starting assessments for a placement.
I work as a ward nurse on emergency/elective surgery and we often get these patients on the ward, it is so sad to see as we don't have the time to help them, at times they end up deteriorating more quickly as they get infection's and get deconditioned as we don't often have physio capacity.

That said, I guess your nan will need some x-rays and pain relief, they may still try to discharge her with OT support. The NHS can never guarantee you will get a bed and it is so traumatic for these elderly people who wait days in A&E before getting a bed.

I hope you get some news quickly.

Do you know why they did that?

she is 95, she should be entitled to have someone with her.

this is the state of the NHS OP.

The ward was congested.

Yes, but they should have allowed a 95 year old to have a carer.

what's the situation now?

There are no beds - where are you going to put a carer?

Your poor grandma, but this sounds like an all too familiar situation - at 95 I’m surprised she lives alone (if I have understood the situation correctly) and not in a proper care home or at the very least, supported retirement flat?

She will now probably end up a ‘social patient’ in the hospital because they won’t be able to discharge her, and so the hospital bottleneck continues.

We need to really overhaul elderly living in this country because it’s crippling our hospitals. I hope the tests come back okay and that somewhere suitable is found for her to live.

PS the bigger hospitals are just as jammed. Something like a third of beds in some trusts are taken by ‘social patients’ who don’t need hospital treatment but there’s nowhere to send them because their home is unsuitable.

Well, I was in with my mum, aged 84, for about 18 hours the other day. A lovely nurse brought me a chair after a while but I did keep getting up and moving it out of the way as more trolleys came in. I took mum to the bathroom in a wheelchair which a paramedic kindly found for us.

There was a lady next to us who had about four family members with her, I can see the objection to 4. Eventually the nurse told them they'd have to take it in turns. She was 97 so couldn't be left either. Her lovely grandson bought me and mum sandwiches.

there was a homeless elderly lady with no one so both me and the family next to us had to help her to walk to the loo a couple of times.

after mum was put in a bay off AAU, (as was the 97 year old), we went home. Sadly the homeless lady was still waiting and she came in before mum but mum had a suspected stroke.

so ...in short, there's room for carers to stand around but I appreciate not all carers will be able to stand. I am very grateful to the nurse who brought the chair...and grateful to all the staff.

Sadly it's common - my relative was told it's a minimum wait of 30 hours in A&E the hospital they were in before they would be moved to a ward. Really difficult for staff and patients.

I hope she gets seen soon. It's really hard for elderly people who need to be seen but also to be comfortable. I spent 8 hours with my Dad in a waiting room in A and E a couple of years ago after being advised to go in and he was just sitting in his wheelchair. We were only 20 mins away. An app or phone call giving appropriate time to come in having logged in first would have been great.

Can't you take her home with you? She'd be so much more comfortable.

Either she’s in need of urgent medical attention or she isn’t. If she’s in a lot of pain then it sounds like she does?

Very normal sadly.

My dMil with dementia was released from hospital on Tuesday, her care home sent her back to hospital yesterday am but at 9.00pm she was still on a trolley in A&E. Dh was advised to go home. At 9.00am dh was told the hospital had no record of her being admitted and that they thought she had been sent back to her care home. It took both of us ringing the care home constantly for almost an hour to finally get through to be told that yes she had returned to them late last night (care home is too short staffed at weekends to answer the phone apparantly).

Nightmare. Why did the care home send her back?

i was chatting with a doctor who has a mum in her 90s. After my mum's stay in A&E in spring this year, he said to me "at this point, our priority should be keeping them out of hospital".

i felt horrendously guilty for making her go to hospital for her latest fall but she blacked out, fell down, hit her head and was concussed and couldn't stand up. I really didn't have a choice. I would have taken any alternative available but there really wasn't one. She was sharp enough to be terribly upset at being taken to hospital but although I apologised, I was clear there was no choice.

bloody shocking to have to protect loved ones from hospital.

She has a bed now, thank goodness and tests are progressing.

What I don't understand is - the hospital is quite new. But seems to be too small by a factor of three for current use, and probably much more for the future.

Glad she is in a bed.

it isn't just the physical size of the hospital. It's the fact we don't have staff. And we can't just create more. Especially when so many are driven away because of being treated badly, and they can make more money working at a supermarket with no initial cost for training.