Poor Hospital Treatment

When I read this article today about Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust I wasn’t surprised. This isn’t down to the fact that I have been to this said hospital but because I’ve seen it happening in many other hospitals. My poor Granddad died last year in hospital in a horrid dirty ward, two days later a man two beds down shot himself. I personally think it was all down to the lack of care and assistance from staff. It took numerous occasions of us asking him to be put on a catheter after finding him lying in a cold soiled bed on many occasions. We were also not informed when he had a serious fall and only found out through my granddad announcing he did a ‘rollie rollie polie’. I’m glad my granddad was suffering from dementia because for him to have experienced this with a clear mind would have been awful and sole crushing. To this day there are letters going back and forth between the hospital and my family. We still have had neither apology nor any remorse towards our feelings; the hospital is standing by its ill-equipped staff and they would rather have us ‘out of their hair’.

I remember as a child going to work with mum and walking with her on her rounds through a London hospital. Seeing clean, respectable wards which were run by well trained staff and looking after their patients who even ill looked comfortable and contented.

If Mid-Staffordshire hospital is typical of what we should expect in hospital care then I’d rather stay at home and as there is now an ‘End of Life’ strategy for dying patients being developed by all Primary Care Trust across the country this should soon be available. However this does not address routine admissions to hospital, especially for the elderly and I can see no future improvement with the current financial situation when only more cuts will be made.http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/appalling-hospital-blamed-for-deaths-1646950.html