"Legal box ticking more important than patient…"

After being admitted to A&E following a series of epileptic seizures, my wife ended up on Ward 25 on Saturday for further obs. On the following Monday, she was told she could go home. We waited until 5pm when I asked what the holdup was. I was then told her discharge was being delayed for 24 hours to ensure a care plan was put in place, and that the staff nurse who should have told us earlier had forgotten to do so. Naturally this upset my wife so much she had another epileptic fit the following morning, so it was decided to keep her in another 24 hours. By now I had had enough, as had my wife. I insisted that she be allowed to go home, stating that the reason for that morning's fit was her not being allowed out the previous day, and that if they continued to delay her discharge she would have further fits and therefore further 24 hour delays and so on and so on. At this point, the doctor in charge of her case made several attempts to prevent me taking her home, the last being a demand to see documentary evidence of any power of attorney I believed I had over her health and welfare. He argued that as she did not have the mental capacity to make her own decisions, the final word was with him and not me, as I did not have that particular piece of paper. I'm sorry to say several heated arguments followed in the company of other patients. Eventually, after threatening to take my wife out and then being threatened with them calling security - to throw us out? Which is what we wanted? - he gave in. Having been told I could collect my wife at 11.30 am, we eventually left at 4.30pm. I don't like to criticise the DRI, in over 40 years of having my wife treated there, their service has ranged from average to marginally excellent. But this was different. Rather than accept that someone with 35 years intimate knowledge of their patient knew better than someone with formal medical qualifications but about a day's personal experience, they preferred to try and tick legalistic boxes rather than take the patient's welfare to heart. It's not just the condescending attitude of the doctor that annoyed me, but the patronising and fake sympathetic attitudes of the two staff nurses we dealt with. I could do without someone I had been having a furious argument with minutes earlier, patting my wife's hand and cooing "I know, I know" to try and calm her down. In future, I will be extremely reluctant to ring 999 if it means this is going to happen.