"Little care and compassion shown to my elderly mother"

After a fall my elderly old mother was admitted to WGH, unfortunately, as a result of her fall she had broken her hip and needed surgery the next day. As you can imagine I was worried about the impact that this would have on her given she has dementia and her mobility already being limited as she cannot weight bear due to bad knees! I absolutely cannot fault the nursing staff in ward 15, but the leadership around the care of my mother left much to be desired! 

My mum went through the hip replacement op and 5 hours later still hadn’t made back up to the ward as she took a while to come around afterwards, when she returned to the ward she looked like a shadow of her former self but that was to be expected given what she had just been through. Over the next few days I was shocked by the slowness of her recovery, unbeknown to me she was experiencing post operative delirium, something that wasn’t treated or diagnosed by the hospital, she was so out of sorts she was moved to a single room so as not to disturb the rest of the ward, completely understandable, but why was the post operative delirium, common in elderly patients with dementia, not treated as this could have aided a quicker recovery.

Come the Saturday she was still in the same state of confusion, when I turned up at the hospital she was in her room, door closed and curtains close, her bed clothes sodden as she had spilt water over her, no idea how long she had been like this. Given her state physically and mentally and that the hospital physios had all but given up on post op physio because of the confusion and the conversation turned to her release back to her care home, which initially was being scheduled for Monday. This led to conversation no1 with the managers on the ward, she was in no fit state to leave hospital, still showing post op delirium and hadn’t been up out of bed, a decision that shocked and surprised me.

On Monday  evening during visiting the bed coordinator came to speak to me and explained that she should be discharged, apparently there was no medical reason for her to be in hospital, I held a different opinion given her state, lack of bowel movements and the fact that has had been in bed since her op, my response was clear, she should not be moved until she was in a better condition. I was surprised again that they blamed her confused state on her dementia and not the post op delirium, knowing her before the op it was crystal clear that this wasn’t her dementia.

On the Tuesday I then received a phone call at work from the hospital manager and head of physio again pushing for discharge as in their opinion their were no medical ground for her to remain and they ‘needed the bed’, this I appreciate but ejecting an elderly woman from hospital before they are ready just to get the bed is wrong and shows no care of compassion for the patient! Still no bowel movements, no post op physio and still showing signs of post op delirium. During Wednesdays visit the surgeon and bed manager once again came to speak to me about her discharge, at this stage I agreed, I was still concerned about her mental state but she had since had a bowel movement and was promised a physio plan would be put in place, I raised my concerns about bed sores given her lack of physio and lying in the same position for almost a week. The discharge was subsequently arranged for Thursday but at 7pm at night she was still on the ward.

Apparently there was a shortage of ambulances and private ambulances had to be hired in for a number of patient transfers that day. I asked why she hadn’t been prioritised given the pressure to release the bed and now time of night and was told that this was decided by the ambulance services. I assumed that the required checks would have been completed with her home and raised my concerns around the time, and the knock on effect that this would have on her arrival given the lateness, arrival time at home and plummeting temperatures. I was told in no uncertain terms by the hospital manager that my mother would be leaving the hospital that night and there was nothing that I could do about it! Appalling behaviours and threatening conversations followed which led me to post about the situation on social media.

The ambulance finally turned up at 7:40pm to take her to the home, only no one had actually checked with the home and they didn’t have the right number of nursing staff on to facilitate the transfer and their lift could not take trolleys, transferred aborted. She finally got transported on Friday and this was the first day that I started to see the post op fog lift from her and a glimmer of her old self come back. I appreciate the pressure that the NHS is under especially with the diminishing social care sector but in this case I felt the management showed little care and compassion, they forgot the patient, showed no heart and seemed to have no consideration for her rehabilitation. It was as if all they could see was a old lady that could go back to her home with dementia and be someone else’s problem. My mum is a fighter and yes she may have dementia but the hospital's insistence on labelling her post of behaviour as dementia related and not for what it was was in my view negligent and some of their subsequent actions and decisions taken to meet numbers and targets and not putting the patient first! It’s fair to say this has left a bitter taste in my mouth and perhaps if I wasn’t as strong willed as my mother brought me up to be she would have been back to her home ready or not on Monday!