"Handling of nil by mouth patients (post stroke)"

My 96 year old father had a stroke in the morning. We were told that he should be nil by mouth. Unfortunately he wasn't placed on a drip until 1.30pm, c.3 hours after arriving in hospital. Presumably, he would have had very little to drink overnight before the stroke.

This delay in rehydrating him caused a UTI needing two courses of antibiotics with 3 days of unnecessary confusion which damaged his initially excellent recovery from the stroke itself. 

 We do hope that lessons can be learnt from this: by having a policy of placing nil by mouth patients immediately on to a drip when they arrive into A&E, the NHS could well have saved, in my father's case, 7+ extra days in hospital, the antibiotics, the catheterisation (& consequent immobilisation at a time when re-mobilisation was critically important) and the conséquent potentially long-lasting delays to his originally excellent recovery from the stroke, with all the attendant aftercare in the community. 

Once my father was admitted to the stroke unit, they were very attentive to his needs and our concerns as a family were listened to and well met, with appropriate discussion and medical explanations and interventions. We were particularly pleased that the stroke unit took very good notice of my father's pre-stroke A1 mental function. This was something which had not been taken on board when my mother entered the same Lincoln County with a UTI in spring 2018.