"The most heartbreaking end to a life."

My 84 year old father with advanced COPD and Alzheimers disease, was admitted with pneumonia in December to ward E3 (via more than 4hrs in A&E).

Evidently scared, he was roughly stripped of clothes in front of my mother  and shown no respect or dignity  The mental health team were not contacted, despite ourselves and the dementia matron requesting it and despite repeated requests from myself and my elderly mother we did not get to meet a consultant or kept informed as to my father's condition.  

His  dementia nutrition needs and evident delirium were ignored and he lost weight alarmingly which we kept raising with ward staff. My mother felt bullied by a social worker when my father was declared fit and a doctor  saying -what is that man still doing here, we need the beds. My father then contracted secondary pneumonia, our requests for a meeting with a multidisciplinary team ignored once more and eventually we were persuaded to agree to my father being transferred to an intermediate care facility  before being medically stable as "that was the only way they could establish his baseline needs and carry out the needs assessment".    

Care at the intermediate facility was poor, my father was once more rushed to A&E and endured more than 5hrs there before being admitted to ward B6 via a period in AMU.    

Again we started the fight re nutrition, it was obvious my father was declining and he had suffered acute delirium, all mobility gone. We finally had a multidisciplinary meeting after I wrote to every head of service possible. The meeting took place, no mention of prognosis was made. My father died a week later.  

I rang on the day of his death for an update and was told he was declining but that it was not urgent for me to visit, that evening I received a call and was told decline but still not that he was dying until I asked directly. We rushed to the hospital only to see that my poor, dear, wonderful father had died without his family and wife of over 50 years. He died in the middle of a busy ward. We had to knock on the ward doors for admission.    

So heartbroken that he was not given the appropriate care and dignity when he needed it the most.