Have namechanged (if you recognize please don't out me) as most who know me in real life know this happened to me, and some know about what else I witnessed, including my Dr who's had to deal with the long term effects. It was years before I could do anything but cry every time anything to do with my stay was even mentioned. I still cant talk about it without crying but I can get the words out now, which I couldn't for some time.
It is a different hospital, but disabled and at the time very immobile: I had a nurse forcibly hold my nose to try to make me open my mouth to breathe, so she could force unprescribed medication into me after I queried if it was right.
When I managed to turn my face into the pillow and grab air that way she slapped me in the face with my file knocking my glasses from my face, breaking them and leaving me with a bleeding nose. She waltzed off leaving me crying. Others quietly consoled but shushed me, fearful of repercussions. She subsequently returned to the bay and announced loudly "This hospital does not tolerate racism to its staff!"
There had been few words or comment and none that could even remotely be construed as racism.
I had queried if the medication was right as they had been withholding my prescribed sleeping tablets and pain meds, and I had said please could that not happen tonight, as I was desperate for a good nights sleep because of what I was facing the next day. Nurse had said no. Then 'later,' then got narked about me asking again, then said she would be "bringing you 'something' to stop you annoying me". I apologised explaining I was just exhausted, in pain and worried about the next day. She appeared to be grumpily accepting.
What she brought was very large, with a large mg no. and it looked nothing like any sleeping tablet I 'd ever seen.
I was prescribed Zoplicone, but she insisted this was a different prescription already on my prescribed list which I knew wasn't actually true. But it was her very odd sudden bright eyed animation, smirking, nervous pacing, and the odd way she was behaving that alarmed me.
I asked what it was, and just got "it is for you" "take it now" I asked her to please double check the chart, she picked it up, didn't look, said "it is on there" and put it beside me. I picked it up to look. She grabbed it saying "the chart is not for you" "open your mouth" then " open your mouth NOW" then grabbed my nose and pinched hard.
She then returned with another nurse to witness her repeating the 'warning.'
I responded by saying I wished to leave and required self discharge papers now. Was initially laughed at mocked, then asked 'where would you go' "You can't look after yourself" etc. Then told I'd have to have a psych assesment. I (after an inevitable many hours wait) did and was found to be "lucid and competent. " So had to wait to have another one to check the reasoning of the 1st. He couldn't say why his colleagues decision had to be verified, but concurred with him.
A matron was then summoned to try and convince me to stay. She was kind and concerned, wanted to move me, but admitted that no matter where I was put she couldn't guarantee that nurse wouldn't have care of me. She accepted giving me self discharge papers. She also confirmed that there was no sleep medication remotely fitting the description I gave, and I was right to refuse to take it.
After a lot of stalling they were eventually forced to allow me to be removed in poor condition. They 'lost' the medications I'd need and claimed I'd have to stay another night to get them. I said fine, I'll go without. The following morning the Dr had intervened and a package was sent round.
I can no longer remember if it was that day, or one day later, that a team to remove me and return me to hospital arrived at my home without warning. I refused to return, and the police came. I discovered there is a second 'detained for safety' act whereby a person deemed lucid and competent but who cannot care for themselves can be detained and taken to a place of safety. I said I accepted the police decision,, but the teams hospital was definately not a place of safety and they could resolve their duty by removing me to any other hospital or for that matter police station while we sorted it. I said I held them responsible for ensuring my safety in the circumstances of 'ensuring a place of safety.'
The team argued with the police that wasn't ok, it had to be their hospital, but couldn't give police or me any valid reason why.
Police agreed I was entirely compliant about anywhere but there and could go to a different hospital (there are three locally) at which point the team said "don't bother" and removed themselves! Confuddled police said if team wasn't now insisting it wasn't safe, then they'd downgrade it all, and I could stay where I was.
There were a number of horrific incidents involving nurses and in one case a junior Dr going rogue, that happened to me or others during the very long time I was stuck in that hospital including the covering up of a death by negligence.
Oddly it was the false cry of racism that brought me to my senses.
I still refuse to be sent to that hospital, and at this point the local health trust has had to agree funding out of area treatment to a neighboring borough as my GP has watched me say 'anywhere but there, or don't bother treating me and let my condition take me quietly and without fear.' The LAS have also accepted in an emergency take me somewhere else or leave me, I prefer to die from the consequences of my condition than risk being party to anything similar again.
The other three hospitals I have been in have tbh all had their moments of below optimal care at times alongside good care, and I have come across a couple of individual borderline staff who have treated me or others very poorly, but it has been individual acts carried out secretly, never ever at such a level of open actual continued malice, deliberate mistreatment, spite and an accepted culture of it, including by the good staff who just distanced themselves from it while trying to make up for it to patients.
What happened to me was actually minor next to what happened to others, but the combination seriously affected me and my future.
I got picked on because they could. I don't know if my sleep and pain meds were regularly withheld to punish me, or for theft/use on others.
Unable to leave my bed I was forced to helplessly witness the appalling treatment of a dying Jewish woman being publicly loudly mocked, starved, and humiliated nightly, another being left all night on a commode that was cutting into her buttocks, eventually just sobbing with her legs weeping pus as we tried to console her, because she had 'missed leg dressing and bed time', the starvation of patients who couldn't eat what they were given (I was one of them) an independent blind woman on arrival have her cane taken, her independence removed, and then when she threw up everywhere, bundled into bed covered in her own vomit (with her shoes on) and passed through several shifts before someone finally deigned to clean her down and put her into a gown, and the worst of all, a lady happily preparing to go home the next day, who unexpectedly fell in the bathroom doing her hair, having just taken an unexpected medication, and despite every ones best efforts to get her help, lay there for over an hour and a half, audibly deteriorating before being unceremoniously carried out, dumped on her bed gurgling, and left. Later they put her legs properly onto the bed and covered her, partially pulled a curtain round her, and left us to listen to her slowly making less and less noises.
No medical help came til the next morning when we told the morning staff, but she was either already dead or dying, by now quietly. The (nicer) staff then told the relatives who arrived to collect her, that I'd witnessed how happy she was to be going back and what a shock it was to everyone that she'd suddenly died, but at least she went happy. To my eternal shame I was suffering some sort Stockholm syndrome and didn't challenge the narrative with her shocked grieving relatives.
(Please don't say how I'm part of it, I know and have punished myself for years)
It shouldn't have been prison and punishment dished out, but it was.
Appalling care of the ill, old, and disabled by those supposedly caring for them and the silencing of them for fear of repercussions to further 'care' is not new.
The sharing of name badges (with the same photo and on closer inspection, not of the wearer) of bank staff in (that) hospitals wards, especially on nights, suggests what I know to happen in domiciliary care, happens in hospitals too.
In domiciliary care it is very easy for individuals to get round DBS if firms aren't vigilant or are desperate for workers. Families sometimes put cost over safety, and work is also often subbed out by some legitimately employed, who offer their shifts (minus a fee) to others who don't have rights to work, language issues etc, so no DBS. It is a more common practice than people want to admit.