Shaking with rage, can't sleep, NHS treatment of elderly

[Krupkrups]

My Grandma (89) has finally come out of hospital tonight finally after nearly nearly 5 weeks.

There's been nothing wrong she had a fall nothing broken, nothing but they wouldn't let her go home my uncle has lived with her for past 8 months since his divorce and she had a career who comes on a lunchtime. They said because she didn't have anyone at home which is bullshit, then social services got involved who were a shower of shite, then the hospital 'forgot' to discharge her twice despite my parents, uncle and care team being at home twice waiting.

Before going into hospital she could;

Get herself and dressed nicely

Get Downstairs / upstairs

Get herself to toilet and wipe herself - no incontinence pants

Make herself food and drinks (hot drinks, kettle on etc.)

Do crosswords

Move around the house with, slowly and with the help of a stick and frame but she did

Her memory was clearly going and she has slowed down cognitively in conversations but she knew we all were still enjoyed face times from my children, still read the paper.

She's come out and frankly it's like she's come out of a Victorian asylum, I am heartbroken, she looks deranged when she's awake sunken eyes strange rolling eyes, has lost an absolute load of weight - she was always very slender possibly too slender before now she looks like a famine survivor.

She is incoherent most of the time when awake.

Can't get out of bed / apparently is imobile - well yes she is now

Can't feed herself isn't eating when being fed

Is wearing adult nappies which have to be changed and the carers are changing and wiping her mess

Is covered in bed sores

I am weeping and raging I feel like driving to the hospital and punching the nurses in that ward in the face!!!! What have they done to her.

I am still haunted by a case of exceptional cruelty by staff towards one patient. My wonderful ward manager nurse and I escalated it to the highest level. An investigation was done. Nobody lost their jobs. We were utterly devastated by the outcome.

100%

I was peripherally involved in a sit down chat with the relatives of someone who had, sadly, died in hospital. Enraged DD, 40s. Dad had come in fit and well and we’d apparently killed him.

No, dad was in his 70s, obese, in heart failure with uncontrolled diabetes, smoker, drinker. He’d arrived in A and E very unwell and had died of a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm.

Recall the horror of ordinary late middle aged men dying of Covid. Apparently in the prime of life. But we’re so used to seeing obesity that it doesn’t register.

Our baselines are rather skewed when we refuse to see 89 as being ‘end of life’.

@Fordian obese is something my Grandma was definitely not!

Asking if they had more than £24,000 in the bank was ascertaining the need for carers, if you have less than that, you get it cheaper/free.

@ElaineBurdock you clearly don’t know how the care system works in the uk now.

@Fordian I live 7 hours away but Mum regularly face times us when she's there and knows we'll be at home. I saw Grandma 10 days before she fell on Facetime and yes she is old but she was up she was dressed had her Alice band in her hair, lovely cashmere cardie on, asking me if I was still wearing my knits or whether it was too warm already in the south because of global warming, she was laughing at my eldest doing silly violin playing. We know she is declining hence my uncle moving in and having the lunchtime carer. But she knew who we all were, and was tootling along slowly and with use of her frame but she was okay. She has only had one fall before this and that was in 2017 where she had a tia and broke her wrist, she was out in 7 full days and she wasn't young then she was in her 80's!! I don't understand why she was kept in so long this time despite them finding nothing physically wrong.

What my Mum has had to see and what I have had to see yesterday was harrowing in comparison.

She is a lot, lot calmer today when awake but she has slept most of the day, she has had a little ice cream tho and let us give her a manicure, put hand cream on and brush her hair.

The GP or someone from GP is coming tomorrow. The carers say the bed sores are starting heal
The cream is actually a prescription cream but one you can buy OTC if you know what I mean, whoever Mum spoke to from practice said it was fine to use for now but the sores will be checked tomorrow.

A similar thing happened to a relative of mine she got a UTI in hospital and MRSA it took months and months but she slowly came back to how she was before similar age

You need to ask the GP to refer to the district nurses. That cream is not going to do anything for pressure damage. She needs a proper assessment before the get worse.

It's not their fault. I spent a week in bed paralysed from pain and unable to get food for over 5 days. This could easily have been dealt with at home. GP refused to come out. GP said go into A&E, I didn't want to go in. Ambulance came at 3 in the morning after a 24 hour wait and took me in. A&E did an xray and sent me straight home, they said this isn't an accident or an emergency your GP should be dealing with this. I felt really humiliated.
Got home, rang GP and got prescribed morphine but had to pay privately for physio to come to my house.
If community care was better A&E would not be full of social problems.

I'd ask the GP to file a DATIX report about her poor condition and especially bedsores seeing she never had any before going in.

Bloody hell, way to deter family from asking for some support! You don't seem to understand how hard it can be to look after elderly relatives which is shocking considering you work for the NHS.

I was surprised at the lack of urgency getting my nan home after a hospital stay. I remember they rang to say she was ready to come home and we could either pick her up that night or tomorrow. I said we'll go down now and get her, someone else could use that bed tonight and I knew she wanted to come out ASAP so why delay it.

Another time an ambulance arrived to take her home and was told she wasn't ready to come out so they couldn't. That also happened when we were meant to pick her up. She was devastated at being told she couldn't come out that time because we'd all been told she could and we were on our way to get her. There is just so much miscommunication. Same thing happened with my dad, kept saying he can go home soon and everyday they'd delay it. He almost threatened to sign himself out of there in the end. I suppose they have to wait on carers and equipment, but clear communication is needed and not false hope you can come out tomorrow when you can't!

I want to add to my post that's on page one of this thread:
My dad, who was kept in the hospital for a few months, did go home again and recovered from the ordeal the hospital put him through. I managed to visit England the following year and I could tell he was extremely traumatized from his hospital stay, although he back to normal. He had a great memory, was very witty. I hate what the hospital put him through.

Yes i was hoping Labour would do this instead of say WFA...

However, as seen with VAT on school fees, Business NI and Nom Doms, there will be howls of protest and more headlines of "Broken Britain" "Millionaires flee Labours Tax Hikes!" etc etc.

The Tories say that expanding NI will hurt growth & thats what the media message will be, they ve opposed the recent increases in CGT but surely, more spend on health education etc can create growth, get people off long term sick and improve our skills base.

The government needs to decide what it wants. If it sees families as part of the solution to the social care of the elderly both at home and hospital, then it can’t simultaneously expect women to be working full time to 66/67, and providing child care to the grandchildren (so their mothers can work to help pay the mortgage), while paying a pittance in carers allowance (which nobody could live on) and doing very little to provide social housing or tackle sky high prices in the housing market?

Imo, the care of people with dementia (and other disabilities) reaches a point, beyond the resources of the average family, and it would be better to have a National Care Service, whereby the supply of careworkers and care homes is run on a no profit basis with regard to the projected need in each county. There is no place for profit in care, as the two are incompatible and the private system leads to a haphazard supply of care homes, which can be miles away from the person’s home and/or family.

Explains a lot though, doesn't it.

Absolutely this. People who haven't actually done this have no idea. I've been through it twice, the last time with MIL was horrendous. You cannot look after someone who won't accept that there's anything wrong and refuses to cooperate.

A friend of mine was in hospital for an operation when an elderly woman with Alzheimer's was admitted to the side ward. She was there because her DD, who was her career, had had a heart attack and was elsewhere in the hospital recovering. This was a woman in her 50s, and there was nowhere else to put her mum but an expensive hospital bed. There was no network of support, everything had been dumped on this one family member who broke under the strain.

Elderly care has been kicked down the road for too long, the post upthread is right, the terrifying cost is the reason. The May government tried but that initiative collapsed, mainly thanks to John McDonnell. The first thing Starmer and Reeves said after the election was that they weren't going to tackle it either. So there we are!

@Firefly1987

but clear communication is needed and not false hope you can come out tomorrow when you can't!

Add in to that when they say on a Friday morning that you're ready to be discharged, and wait, and wait, and wait, it's it not until Monday before the paperwork has been done and the prescriptions given to you. That's happened to me and other family members a few times. Bed blocking all weekend because the "admin" and pharmacy staff have Friday afternoon off and won't return till Monday morning. (Other than the "skeleton" pharmacy staff issuing drugs for in-patients who won't issue anything for out-patients or discharges).

In my case, I was basically ignored from Friday to Monday - no "obs" as I'd been cleared to be discharged, no nurses came near. Just the HCA bringing meals. None of the staff seemed remotely interested that I was still there, taking up a bed, so it must be pretty normal to them.

It really should be a proper 24-7 organisation, not just for emergencies/urgent things as bed blocking over a weekend is probably partly why A&E is always rammed as they're full of patients needing to be admitted, who can't have beds because people waiting to be discharged are still bed-blocking.

That's exactly what happened with MIL. She spent 48 hours on a trolley in A&E over New Year, then, funnily enough, they found a bed for her on first day back after the bank holiday!

I think NHS staff are somehow immune to seeing the realities of what's in front of them. Perhaps they've been in the NHS so long, they know nothing changes so just accept all the stupidity and inefficiency and damage to patients as inevitable. None of it is acceptable and it needs challenging.

@Badbadbunny we have had similar experience with DM.

Decision made to discharge, transfer to the 'Discharge Lounge' then have to wait to sort the actual practicalities of discharge: meds, care home assessment (can they still cope with her increasing needs), hospital transport.

This can all take days. Of course it is horribly stressful and disorientating for DM. To the point where on a couple of occasions she has had to be returned to a ward for further medical treatment.

'Bed blocking' has a nasty undertone of blame.

I'm an only child with no siblings and no children of my own.

We added an extension so that I could move in Mum. On the last day of the build, DH had a major ischaemic stroke. He was in hospital 4 months learning to walk again.

In the meantime, I was working full time, diving to the hospital to see DH (and take in changes of clothes etc), then driving to Mum's spending the night there and trying to keep on top of work whilst decluttering at Mum's etc. Oh - and dealing with problems stemming from some of the work on the house being done incorrectly and a bolshie contractor demanding the final payment whilst denying that there were any problems.

I made the mistake of telling a HCP that I didn't know how I was going to cope with working full time and looking after two invalids. (DH had already been in poor health, but he now had hemiparesis.)

I was lectured. "You're no different from me! I'm working full time and I have two children."

Ah. I was unaware that two healthy children require the same moving and handling as two adults.

That sounds incredibly tough. Too many GPs appear to have had an empathy bypass.

Sympathies about being an only. I'm facing that reality with my elderly mother. DH the same with his as his sisters live abroad so I can see now that having siblings is not always helpful.

@GnomeDePlume

'Bed blocking' has a nasty undertone of blame.

Sadly the entire NHS has morphed into a "blame the patient" organisation. It's their way of deflecting blame from their own failures and lack of care.

It's always patients at fault for missed appointments (even though they still send letters out by snail mail that arrive after the appointment date, or put out of service phone numbers on appointment letters so you can't phone to change/cancel etc). Patient's fault for turning up at A&E despite them being unable to get a GP appointment or being told by 111 to go to A&E etc etc.

"Bed blocking" is a simple fact... the "blame" lies in a lack of staff, too few OTs to do assessments, private companies lagging behind to get equipment in or badly fitted, lack of adult social care, no places in private nursing homes, families, often rightly, refusing to take on the caring role... and yes screw up's by the Hospital too.
But i've never heard anyone, either in Govt the NHS or anyone else, blame the patient.

I cannot speak for trusts nationally but my local NHS trust is rated quite poorly, yet has a robust system to send out letters/emails and telephone calls regarding appointments to avoid missed ones.

Demand for NHS services is through the roof, we knew we were heading for an ever aging population but for the last 15 or 20 years refused to plan for it & the general population has refused to take any responsibility for its own health.

The way services are set up does not help people to take responsibility.

On MN people are frequently told not to use A&E but to use walk in centres. My GP surgery says to use our 'local' urgent care centre if an urgent appointment is needed. That 'local' centre is 40 minutes away by car or over 2 hours by bus. A taxi is over £50 each way.

We aren't in a remote rural area, this is a central county which just happens to be badly served both for healthcare and public transport.