"My mum's care"

Mum was admitted to A&E Brighton Hospital with a stage 3 heart block.  We stayed in resus from midnight to 11am the following day. We then went up to the CCU ward, where mum rapidly deteriorated and was near to complete collapse so an emergency pacemaker was implanted.

After her operation she began to improve slowly and the care given was excellent. After a few days she was moved to Lewes/Albion ward. When she turned up no one saw her or took her obs for at least an hour and a half. She was left in bed with minimal care for 5 days. No help was offered to eat meals which she could obviously not cut up. 

I visited her every day and kept telling the staff that we had her house ready for her return - all on one level to start with and 24-hour supervision. One of the staff members told me I should think about putting her in a home, which I feel was out of order and most upsetting.

When I spoke to a different member of staff, they agreed with me and they couldn't understand why mum wasn't being encouraged to move around and get back to normal.  A staff member gave mum a filthy look when she had a urine accident, and was trying to clean up the floor herself.

Her care on Lewes/Albion ward was very poor - they even rang my brother to see if we were able to accept her back home. The communication on this ward was non-existent, and apart from certain members of staff I was shocked and upset to see what was going on here.  Lots of meetings, lots of staff, but no actual patient care.

Thankfully, she was discharged after my constant badgering of the staff and she is now on the mend after nearly dying in front of me .

Please learn some lessons from this, so no one else has this sort of experience in future!