hospital care (less)

[expat]

OH's mother, aged 85, fell and broke a leg. Into hospital and a cast was put on it.

Now she needs physiotherapy, having been laid up for a few weeks. Problem is, she's not getting it. Why not? Because she is bedridden, on oxygen, and on a catheter for urine passage.

How come? Well, she has smoked heavily for decades. Now suddenly they won't let her smoke. As anyone who has given up from heavy smoking knows, when you stop your body grasps the opportunity to clear out the junk. OK if you're younger, but if you're 85 and in bed, that's bad for you. All that phlegm obstructs your breathing. So they put her on oxygen.

Why the urine catheter? Well, with a cast on the leg and the oxygen, it's just too difficult to get her on the commode. She's not incontinent, it's just not convenient for the staff.

OK: plaster cast, oxygen, catheter. Can't do physiotherapy with all that lot. So she just stays in hospital, making no progress, becoming disheartened (like, there is no plan in place to clean her dentures: staff don't do it, she can't, she depends on visitors to do it). Not because of her medical condition, but because of hospital rules and convenience.

She advised us to join BUPA. I think I will. Or leave the country.

[ChimpMaster]

My grandad went into hospital for a routine infection and died.

I think hospitals here prefer old people to die.

[DimPrawn]

I blame Thatcher.

If only we had a government that spend 11 years taxing the working population into crippling debt and then spent it all on "investments" in the public sector.

We'd be laughing then.

[mailric]

If your ill and your past retirement age... it seems the last place to go to is Hospital

You can't even look forward to bed baths anymore as alot of the nurses are blokes

[TimberWolf]

I think lung problems are quite common with older people laying in bed for long periods. And falling over and breaking a hip a very common occurrence with elderly women.

Quite often with single elderly women the cycle is thus: fine-->fall --> break hip --> hospital --> care home

[Olly]

agree....make me mad.
lewisham hospital.
the ward was staffed by 90% African ladies who really truly didn't give a f..k the few Irish/English/East European nurses there had practically given up on getting them to pull their weight and be conscientious and pro-active.

They were gruff, barely intelligible, let the place get filthy and were quite happy for it to stay like that while they sat on their fat asses.

My gran was so dehydrated I thought that it was going to kill her, she was too shaky and weak to hold a cup and thus began the cycle. Bed sores caused by poor nursing have never healed.

The whole air of apathy and laziness just pervaded the place...truly rotten to the core.

But...I wonder if it's just certain hospitals or wards?

My brother was in a fairly sunny, cheery ward at the John Radcliff in Oxford staffed largely by Filipinos with a few more senior Irish nurses. All in all it seemed fine.

If you're going to get ill don't do it in an large inner city area.

[TimberWolf]

If you're going to get ill don't do it in an large inner city area.

If you are going to get old, don't do it in Britain. As bad as things may be, these are the boom times.

[expat]

When my mother was nursing, some eons ago, if a patient got bedsores, one was up before Matron (think Hattie Jaques with the attitude of Sergeant Hartman) to explain why... and to have a strip torn off you.

Quite how the Sainted Margaret thought that hospitals would be kept anything resembling clean by introducing private companies as cleaners is beyond me.

This country is returning to the bad old days where if you went into hospital you died. From an acquired infection.

"The bad old days" is just what I thought of when I heard about the false teeth (not just our gran but other patients too): patients dependent on relatives coming in to perform essential functions, very pre-Florence Nightingale.

Unfortunaltely my OH is in full-time work and 2 hours from the hospital; and the patient's husband is himself 88 years old and unwell, so visits every day are not on. And they move her from one ward to another, each with different visiting hours, so you can turn up for one time and find that it should have been another.

[expat]

When my mother was nursing, some eons ago, if a patient got bedsores, one was up before Matron (think Hattie Jaques with the attitude of Sergeant Hartman) to explain why... and to have a strip torn off you.

Quite how the Sainted Margaret thought that hospitals would be kept anything resembling clean by introducing private companies as cleaners is beyond me.

This country is returning to the bad old days where if you went into hospital you died. From an acquired infection.

"The bad old days" is just what I thought of when I heard about the false teeth (not just our gran but other patients too): patients being dependent on relatives coming in to perform essential functions, very pre-Florence Nightingale.

Unfortunaltely my OH is in full-time work and 2 hours from the hospital; and the patient's husband is himself 88 years old and unwell, so visits every day are not on. And they move her from one ward to another, each with different visiting hours, so you can turn up for one time and find that it should have been another.

And that's another thing: moving her from one ward to another, leaving her stuff behind. Or bringing it in a plastic bag and just leaving it on the floor. Taking her glasses off and just leaving them at the other side of the ward.

It's all painfully, unnecessarily humiliating. I'd rather die; but I'd want to take some with me

[DS23]

my grand uncle is 94 this year. every time i visit him he tells me the same thing: "my dad, when he was old, told me "son, don't get old. it's terrible" and he was right, it is terrible" he then pats me on the knee and mournfully mutters; "don't get old".