icanhandthemback
Has anything changed? My Mum was recently hospitalised with Aspiration Pneumonia. The NICE guideline were not followed so we wait to see if she will survive. We have put in a formal safeguarding complain but I have little faith in the system. I told the Hospital what had happened and they were quite happy to send her back to the Nursing Home when she was ready so it took my sister to leap up and down before the hospital acknowledged there was a serious safeguarding issue. Now she will stay in hospital until they can find another care setting if she recovers. Up until now, despite expressing concerns at the Nursing Home and paying a princely sum of over £6000 a month, I have had to ensure that somebody goes in every night to give her tea as she couldn't manage it by herself. Reassurances that the care staff would assist if we didn't do that were proved wrong when I turned up a couple of times about 2 and half hours after mealtimes to find her meal totally untouched. Every step of the way the Home minimised my Mum's condition as they were worried she would get CHC.
In her respite Care Home, she came back with half her tablets untouched and a raging UTI so she collapsed on the first night home. When we queried it, they had no explanation for the failure to medicate properly or detect the very obvious UTI. The safeguarding complaint process was a joke and fizzled out with nothing done. It is so worrying.
It truly is horrific!
When I was last in hospital. there was a lovely old lady lady across from me - all she could do bless her was smile, nothing else, and smile she did. If it wasn't for me she wouldn't have had a drink, shivered with the cold when the sun went down, or boiled in the blazing sun as the staff didn't pull the blinds over. Her drink would be left on her table at the end of the bloody bed! Which is exactly where her meal was left, not by nursing staff, but a cleaner who appeared to change roles at mealtimes. Said cleaner would then come back and collect the tray, sometimes asking if she wasn't hungry! Some would have just taken it away if it weren't for me telling them she needed feeding! Someone would then come and feed her a meal that had been sat out for about an hour. I was absolutely incensed! All of us that bay had been put there because they 'thought' we may have covid - none of did, and the staff would just look in at the door rather than come in, that was kept down to the bare minimum. Before I left, she was discharged 'home', and I remember saying that I wondered if she had care etc. She then came back a few hours later, as she lived on the 1st or 2nd floor and there was no lift so the ambulance staff couldn't get her up there! They then put the poor old lass in a side room, where there was no-one to feed her or give her a drink. I was discharged and she was still there - I have no doubt that she probably died in there.
I hate our local hellhole, but sadly reckon I will be in there again soon with a strangulated bowel - it's scary ....
I am just in the process of asking my SIL if the care homes could actually refuse hospital discharges, as this would be why many failed during this time. (I have a sneaking suspicion that they couldn't, or was it the owners of the homes being greedy when they should have known they hadn't the staff to cater for all these new residents?) He worked for hours and hours on end trying to keep the place afloat - he has since left care as the pressure was too much. He began to feel like he had to hurt himself so that he didn't have to go in. He was passionate about social care, and loved working with dementia residents, and they lost him - and thousands of others who didn't want the vaccine, which doesn't stop transmission anyway!
Hancock et al need to be in jail for crimes against humanity in my opinion!