Beyond furious with hospital discharge

[TonTonMacoute]

MIL has just been sent home from hospital after an operation and a period of recovery. We went over to settle her in, did shopping and so on. We spent a while putting all her meds into the dispenser had a cup of tea then left her, she was totally exhausted and couldn't wait to go up and have a sleep.

Within an hour she rang us to say she had fallen and couldn't get up, luckily we are very close by so DH is over there with her, waiting for an ambulance.

DH had been telling staff at both the hospitals she was in that she lived alone, has Alzheimer's and should not be discharged until an appropriate care package was in place.

They have completely ignored him. We checked her discharge paperwork and it states that they asked her if she wanted help at home and she said no - and they just took her at her word.

They clearly hadn't checked her notes, or it wasn't in her notes, that she lacks proper capacity to make decisions, during her hospital stay they had to put her under a Deprivation of Liberty Order for a time as she was being so difficult when they stopped her anti-psych medication.

DH has been telling them over and over and over again that there was a big risk sending her home they have ignored him and this has happened and I am just fuming about it. It was completely avoidable and now she's headed straight back to hospital again!

MIL is as stubborn as a mule and is very difficult to help. That is why we kept telling them that they couldn't assume that we would be able to provide all the help she might need and we needed another pair of eyes on her.

if you, her family, cannot persuade her to fork out for the help she needs, why do you think the NHS can?

@52andblue I'm so sorry, you have my sympathy. My DF looked after my DM at home and the toll it takes is tremendous - he did have great care support though.

@KangarooKenny Yes, friends and family who have been through this have been very helpful and who said the same thing, that's what we were trying to do! We'll keep trying though, DH is quite good at the steel ball stuff

I'm bailing out now and thanks for all the helpful comments but I seem to have attracted the interest of some people who just want to have a pop even though they have no idea of the whole story.

One of the most glaring blunders here is the fact that a woman with Alzheimer's was taken at her word by medical staff when she said that she didn't need help. This is happening in my life right now with my mother, who can't even decide when she's hungry or needs her incontinence pad changed. But, hey, she got 17 out of 30 in a mental capacity test carried out by an OT and, because she knows her own date of birth, she can decide she doesn't need care and that she wants to stay in her own home because she does everything herself. She doesn't do ANYTHING herself. She thinks she does though! And some of the carers turn up, ask her if she needs anything, she says 'no' and they bugger off. Things have improved, but I still have to check every day that they have gotten her out of bed, as opposed to letting her have 'a wee lie in'. A 'lie in' which lasted until 5.30pm one day, despite a morning and afternoon call from the carers. No food. No pad change. Nothing. Because she nodded and agreed she wanted to stay in bed. Assuming someone with Alzheimer's has mental capacity just because they can nod their head and sound plausible is utterly ridiculous.

@Organictangerine Sometimes people will listen to outsiders rather than their own families. It's not that difficult to understand.

You and your DH have my deepest sympathy @TonTonMacoute. It's a tough situation.

Just wanted to connect on the home visit thing. Acute hospital OTs very rarely complete a home visit. Maybe if a patient is a new wheelchair user or we know the house has multiple internal steps or something quirky that we are worried the patient would not manage. Each of the OTs on my team covers a ward of 27 elderly frail patients who live over 3 counties and can be over an hour away geographically.
If the ward OT goes off to see your MIL house, there are 26 other patients who don't get seen that morning.
It may even be that the ward did not refer for an OT assessment.
If they had, the OT would have chatted to mum about what she had at home and if any indication she was confused or did not know answers to questions such as " do you have anything on or around your toilet to help you off" they would call a family member to check on the answers.
They would then walk MIL to toilet and see if she could manage everything safely without using rails off normal height toilet.
FWIW, I do agree it was a poor discharge but strongly suspect she was never referred to OT.

In this case I think it may be sensible for someone to stay with her especially in the days after a hospital stay? It might not prevent things like this but a bit of peace of mind she can get immediate help may help. I agree with the PP that if she has the money to pay for care it may be helpful to look at any aids she can buy and you or dh can fit for her for her return home. I sympathise it is difficult having ailing relatives

Just an update.

MIL has been back in hospital for a week. She was returned home following her first fall and fell again less than 24 hours later. She is in a critical ward for the elderly and under the care of a specialist geriatric consultant.

She was found to be very anaemic, and we have also had some feedback on her dementia with the consultant saying that the head scans, combined with our account of behaviour over the last 2 years, point to her suffering from Alzheimer's and vascular dementia.

The consultant was very surprised that MIL had been sent home with no care plan and no consultation with us.

So now we wait and see.

An inevitable outcome. At least the geriatricians are involved now. How is it going?