"A terrible place!"

My father was taken into the hospital Jan 2013 with a chest infection. His Age was 78yrs he had dementia. He was left without fluids or pain relief. We had to insist on them swabbing his mouth which was dry. We were not informed when they moved him to another ward. My mother was told by a junior doctor that her husband was dying, no empathy at all! We had to insist on them putting him on a drip and giving him pain relief. End of life care was not discussed at any stage. He developed sores but was not turned on a regular basis. Once moved to another ward we thought things would improve, sadly not. He started to recover from the infection so started to get up out of bed. Having dementia the infection had heightened the confusion. They prescribed him temazapam to sedate him. This resulted in falls also on one visit we found him so drugged up we couldn't wake him up! We came across staff signing the obs charts without even checking his condition or comfort. We noticed information hadn't been entered on care plans or daily charts. Nurses had entered fluids and food taken on one chart but he clearly hadnt had them due to not being able to wake him up due to sedation.We were so disgusted with the standard of care we discharged him and continued the care at home. He went on to live a further 8 months at home under the family care. We are convinced if we had left him in hospital we would have lost him earlier in the year.