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.

Plenty of blame on the competitive not going to A&E threads. Some of whom claim to work within it. So maybe the reason youve not heard the blame the patient rhetoric is because they do it under a pseudonym

I can’t edit my reply just wanted to say @Krupkrups we where to told to give it 6 months with no more hospital admissions and she would be back to the way she was so give your grandma time to settle back in at home and get use to her routine again and she will be fine. I’m so sorry you’re going through all this it’s horrible and the hospitals are next to useless when it comes to the elderly they don’t want to treat them they are doing the bare minimum until they die. I remember one time when my grandma was in the hospital they decided out of the blue one morning that she could go home after breakfast the nurses where hovering round while she was trying to eat her breakfast because they wanted her out she didn’t get to finish her breakfast or her cup of tea before they where putting her in the wheelchair while chucking her stuff out of the cabinet to send her home.

It’s good to read a positive assessment of the St Helier, it gives me some hope that overall standards there are better than what my DH’s family experienced. My FIL had to be hospitalised there after becoming ill while away from home, and although he had a life-limiting condition he had been relatively well until admitted. He deteriorated surprisingly fast there and died 3 days later. Naturally I realise it may have just been his time, but we all have serious misgivings about various aspects of how he was treated there and we weren’t reassured by some of the reviews of the hospital at that time. This was almost 10 years ago though, and hopefully our experiences aren’t representative of current standards of care there.

Far better than Epsom doesn't extrapolate to good. It's a very low base from which to start sadly.

I see. Sorry to hear that.

Both of my two nearest hospitals are rated as 'requires improvement', one of them isn't even rated as 'safe'.

Not so fast. Here is a story about St Helier Hospital nr Sutton, the sister hospital of Epsom General, from a couple or so years ago. Unfortunately, I only happened upon it after my father had died at Epsom in October 2023. I don't think it made it into the hard copy of the Comet, possibly because the paper is reliant on advertising from the healthcare sector. Likewise, the paper really will no longer run stories about poor care in nursing homes via complaints raised by relatives, possibly for the same kind of reasons.

https://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/23748284.met-police-opens-investigation-st-helier-hospital-staff/

I contacted the journalist about things going on in Epsom Hospital but while he took the trouble to reply, he didn't pick it up. No journalist will touch this issue - and as for contacting your MP, they won't touch it either. I raised the issue of Surrey Social Services with my former MP Chris Grayling, and actually came away with the impression he was tipping them off as to our actions, he eventually turned petulant and sarcastic via email. That you might expect from a person of his calibre, but I am very sorry to say his Lib Dam replacement Helen Maguire, whom I met on this issue at the end of last year, has yet to respond meaningfully to the issues I raised. She seemed nice enough in our short meeting but then so did Grayling until I cottoned on.

Say the care home has the bare minimum of staff, they must have by law. If your elderly relative goes there, funded by SS and they are expected to help them walk to the toilet to improve mobility; feed them at mealtimes, etc? It’s extra work for the staff, above and beyond their staffing. They know they will get a steady stream of referrals from SS regardless, and SS aren’t even paying for the basic care required, never mind extra care? It’s quite easy to have one resident replaced by another; who might need less care next time?

Bloody hell. Thanks for sharing that. I have to say I don’t find it inconceivable that the St Helier could act in this way based on FIL’s experiences there.

And putting DNARs in place by stealth - we experienced this with my dad. When questioned the hospital (not the St Helier, one in the Midlands) just came out with all the usual stuff that he wouldn’t survive CPR etc, we knew and accepted all of that. It was the complete absence of consultation that we found unacceptable. Especially as it caused my dad distress when we needed to call the paramedics further down the line, as it turned out he had misinterpreted the DNAR order as meaning he would be refused treatment of any kind in the future. He thought he was just going to be left to die the next time he needed medical assistance. An actual conversation on the hospital’s part could have obviated this.

It seems to me that some hospitals think if a person isn’t expected to survive CPR there’s no need to bother informing patients/relatives that they’re putting a DNAR in place, the patient/relatives then being treated like they’re in some sort of denial if they object to this. It’s positively dystopian imo.

Twice when leaving hospital, we have found out DNAR have been completed for my Dad, when it has just been handed to us with his discharge notes. In his case, it is probably medically appropriate, we are not in denial, but the lack of consultation or explanation is heartless.

A friend has a brain injury, this limits his movement and he is slow, still perfectly able mentally, just requires more processing them, doesn’t lack understanding etc. When he had a planned procedure he discovered upon discharge a DNAR had been put in place as it was in his discharge notes. He made sure someone else had POA after his injury, and shock horror his sister with POA hadn’t been informed either.

It's true. The elderly are neglected.

My dad had a fall last year, and the local doctor finally sent a trainee to our house. The trainee advised sending him to A&E for an xray. This 2.5 weeks after the fall. In A&E he was ignored despite being in serious discomfort. His details weren't taken and he wouldn't have been seen if I hadn't pushed it. Next day, we were told he couldn't be discharged without carers being at the house. We weren't happy, but had no choice. At least he'd be getting good care, I thought. Wrong. Called him after ten in the evening - this after leaving many hours earlier. He was in a corridor and hadn't been offered any food since breakfast. By the time he got home after a week of neglect, disrespect and incompetence, he was in such a state the carers immediately said they weren't up to the job. He had to be sent away, and the rapid deterioration continued.

My impression is that most staff are doing their best, but they're completely bogged down by bureaucracy.

I’ve worked in a care home and that’s really not how it works. I have seen residents moved on to other homes if it doesn’t work out. Sometimes because care needs were minimised. No one just neglects them to death. I’d argue the opposite and people are often pushed to keep going with shakes and fluids even when death is pretty imminent.

Also the bar is really high for SS funded care so they all need lots of help.

No, the staff on the Elderly Care Unit told me, they had never seen someone with such poor kidney function. (MIL needed dialysis, but she was too frail for it). They wondered to me, how long she’d been left without food or drinks.

She was diagnosed with a UTI on the Friday and prescribed antibiotics. The GP said to push fluids. We visited on the Monday, because we lived over 3 hours away. The staff hadn’t got the prescription, even though the pharmacy was across the road. They told us, she wasn’t drinking although we got her to drink a smoothie in 45 minutes. DH said to the staff that surely she should be on IV fluids? In other words, she should be in hospital?

The care home called an ambulance Saturday night; and she was admitted to the Elderly Care Ward on the Sunday.

I would call it neglect, leaving someone, who is not drinking from Monday to Saturday night?

Actually, I remember now, we had stayed in a hotel the Monday night. We went to see her Tuesday morning. We got there at 10.30 am. Her curtains were still shut, she hadn’t been given her glasses and I could tell from the smell, her incontinence pad was full. It’s hadn’t been changed since the night before, when we left. Unfortunately, I have experience of that kind of thing.

They offered her Weetabix and tea for breakfast. DH had to tell them, she couldn’t abide tea; and she wouldn’t eat cereal in cold milk. We asked why this wasn’t in the care plan, among her food dislikes?

We wouldn’t have left, without making sure she’d had another drink, because we’d bought her a pack of 4 smoothies.

Have to say I've experienced far more of the NHS trying to chuck out still unwell elderly patients without a care plan in place.

Hospital staff 'sell' DNR/DNARs to families by arguing it's a last-ditch thing, that if their heart fails it would be cruel and futile to resusitate them via CPR - this is easy to agree to. It's also irrelevant in a good many cases because many of the elderly will not die of a heart attack or stroke anyway, certainly not in my parent's case. Surely families are annoyed at this DNR going on behind their backs because of what it really means... 'the doctor will kill you now'. It was highly prevalent during lockdown.

At Epsom Hospital the second time we sort of called their bluff and said, okay, we have LPA in Health and Welfare and we don't want him DRR. The doctors in A&E cheerfully overruled us! So it's like, we'll persuade you and if you're not convinced, we'll go ahead and do it anyway!

The journalist told me that the law says doctors can put patients on DNR without families' permission anyway, the only reason this was a story was because of forging documents.

These stories are the meat and drink of local authority corruption - if you work for the State and know it goes on, you're complicit and sitting at the top table. If you know it goes on and you don't work for the State, well, you're the traumatised victim so in no position to raise the hue and cry.

See if this letter is of any use to him in future:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/PRN00211-dnacpr-people-with-a-learning-disability-and-or-autism.pdf

Surely families are annoyed at this DNR going on behind their backs because of what it really means... 'the doctor will kill you now'. It was highly prevalent during lockdown.

@NewspaperTaxis I imagine the current phase of the COVID enquiry is going to look at this? It’s on care homes?

This is awful to read, but what's even more awful is that I'm not remotely surprised. I've sometimes wondered if I was being paranoid over this stuff, but it sounds like maybe I wasn't. 😕

You are also the poster who said look after them better. Can you please explain how this is to be achieved with an elderly person who is a massive falls risk. Who wont have a stairlift fitted or a commode. Anyone who helps DM up the stairs is risking being involved in an accident themselves. So if the relative ends up with a life changing injury whos going to look after THEM. You? The NHS? (Youve said here there isnt the staff as it is so that also means there isnt the staff to care for extra patients involved in accidents in the home caused by situations like this) The Goverment? The DWP? Who looks after the relative who is at risk of being involved in a fall???!!!!

@DoingthefullGareth still waiting for your petition for the mental capacity laws to be changed so we can change this

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/elderly_parents/5261085-dm-refusing-any-kind-of-professional-help?page=1

Get off my case. It’s not that bloody deep. I haven’t had time anyway, I’ve worked the last 4 days as I work for the NHS. I don’t have time or the energy to be @ at posters about complete nonsense. Obviously you do. 🙄

You cant have it both ways. If ppl are deemed to have mental capacity and refuse help that cant be blamed on relatives not "looking after them better"

Didnt you realise that working for the NHS meant working bank holidays or is it just a martyr complex