"Delays to Being Discharged"

I finally got parent (P1) home about 8 the other night. I took my other parent (P2) with me to the hospital as P2 can't be left alone, so needed to come with me.

We were all very tired by the time we reached their home at 8pm!

And then I had to settle them in at home, reassure them, make sure that they had basic things and that P1 knew about the medicines etc, before having to drive all the way to my own home. So I was even more exhausted by the time I reached my home.

P1 was in the Coronary Care Unit (CCU).

This doesn't appear on any signs anywhere, so is almost impossible to find! I have listed it as cardiovascular for this review, which seemed the closest thing.

I'd been told at 2pm by the CCU that they were happy for P1 to leave the hospital at that point, but that it would take some time to sort out P1's medicines.

I got there with P2 at 4pm, which I thought would allow plenty of time for the medicines to have been sorted.

But it took until 7.15pm for me to harass them into completing the paperwork and letting us go!

Why should it be so difficult?

What on earth time would we have left if I hadn't harassed them?

Don't they ever put themselves in the position of the patient and their carers and try and do what is right by the patient??

Really, P1 should have been discharged and left the hospital with the medicines at about 11am which would have saved the NHS 2 meals and freed up a bed for someone else several hours earlier, but somehow things don't happen that way.

Why not?

It was the same for at least 2 others in the same small ward, so this is by no means an unusual problem.

Why can't there be better, more coordinated planning around discharge - particularly, but not only, around medicines?

It's a terrible to treat any patient, let alone frail elderly patients, by leaving them hanging around unnecessarily for hours and hours, getting tired and anxious.

It is terrible customer service.

It's also very inefficient use of scarce NHS resources.