Absolute disregard for patient's comfort and dignity (From Warrington Guardian)

Absolute disregard for patient's comfort and dignity

On0 September 11 my father was admitted from Hollins Park Hospital to A&E at Warrington. He was admitted at 10.30pm and received a bed in ward A1 at 2am the following morning.

Why did it take so long for him to be assessed, treated and admitted to the ward?

Patients are triaged and, had this been done correctly, it would have been noted that my father's advanced state of Alzheimer's necessitated that he be given some priority.

The sedate and almost lethargic approach of the staff was shocking, compounded by the bemoaning of the sister that she had not had a drink for hours.

The doctor's ambling pace in dealing with my father, his resolute indifference to informing us, his family, as to what he was doing and why, was quite disturbing. His only interaction with us was to hand my mother the file on completion of his 'assessment', without instructing her what to do with it, or why he was giving it to her, not that he ought to have handed it to her at all. In addition, the sister had stated to the care assistants accompanying my father that some of his required medication was not available at the hospital and so it was ordered from Hollins Park. The same sister subsequently asked why the medication was on its way and for what reason, claiming she was concerned he may be given two doses of a similar drug - the overall implication being that she did not have a firm grasp of the situation.

He was moved from A&E by a nurse who was going to leave him attached to the heart monitor had we not pointed this out. On arriving in A1, the nurses had him lying in a bed, in his extremely agitated state, with no protection on the bars of the bed to stop him harming himself.

We visited the next day at 3pm - he had been moved to ward B16, his mouth was blistering due to dehydration. As we proceeded to give him a drink, my mother was abruptly told that he was nil by mouth, there was no sign that he was nil by mouth. Asked why this was the case - the doctor had assessed him as being at risk of choking; he was not at risk of choking, but rather admitted for a chest infection which resulted in him coughing frequently. Since his admission the previous evening, he had been given just one saline drip - no food or any other fluids.

The following day my mother asked one of the nurses about my father's condition, the nurse was happy to answer, but told her she would keep writing some notes (about another patient) while she talked, as she was busy. When another nurse was asked if she could help pull my father up the bed, as he kept slipping down, her reply was: "I've lifted him 15 times today and he's killing my back".

On the Wednesday, my mother and aunt arrived to visit, to find him lying on the bed during visiting hours, wearing only an incontinence pad. The nurse claimed that they had tried to dress him, but that he had said he did not want to wear his pyjamas; ironically lucid for a man who, the previous day, was incapable of stringing a sentence together.

He was discharged from hospital on the Thursday to the Stretton Unit at Oakdean, the staff there noted that he arrived hungry and soaked in his own urine.

He died on the Friday evening, thankfully at least, in a caring, professional and empathetic environment.

That the hospital can allow in a single case, a catalogue of incompetence such as this, compounded by a distinctly dismissive attitude, and absolute disregard for the comfort and dignity of a patient, to say nothing of the anxiety of his family, I find abhorrent.

I would not be so naive to suggest that the standard of hospital care was a contributory factory in my father's death. That he was ill and his death inevitable is a given, but the human factory that is Warrington Hospital did not exactly excel itself.

MR J B TAYLOR

Hackney, London