"End of Life Care"

Cornhill Hospital

Good medical attention but complete lack of communication about timescales of care. Once we changed social work team to hospital discharge - there was then one information session to my parents who asked the social worker to phone me (their daughter) to explain. This didn't happen. Then a social worker with no context phoned my distressed dad who said a particular care home would be easy to travel to.

Before we knew it an ambulance was booked and my mother moved with much distress. I had to stop my dad re mortgaging his house since no financial assessment done, We had in the meantime decided we wanted her home. Staff at Cornhill avoided me and wouldn't discuss the situation. I had to go cap in hand and ask for the move not to be on the day my dad had a medical procedure. We always knew Cornhill was time limited but lack of communication was unhelpful and ways of treating people in distress need to be learned.

There was a lack of hand-over info to the Care home so that my mum received no medication in the first 12 hours.

My mum died 13 days after leaving Cornhill - 7 of these days were distressing due to lack of adequate communication from Cornhill.

Lack of empathy from the Social Work assistant was spectacular.

However, the staff in Riverside View Nursing home were amazing, empathetic, hard working and went above and beyond. They showed all the character and concern that was lacking from the systems in social work discharge team and Cornhill (individual nurses good but overall ethos lacking).