"Poor elderly care"

I am the manager of a small care home. We dread our residents going to hospital but sometimes it is inevitable.

One of our residents recently spent a week in hospital (actually it was 2 hospitals both part of the same trust). This resident is in his 80s and frail but had been doing really well in the home, eating and drinking well, happy and contented, free of pressure sores and his skin in good condition despite severe psoriasis. This resident has a catheter and got an infection that was quite bad, he also has a kidney tumour exasperating the problem. So he went to hospital for the infection to be treated. He responded well to treatment within a day or so and we asked for him to come home as we are quite able to care for him with support from District nurses (who, by the way, are wonderful). It took another week to get him home during which time he was transferred to another hospital.

When he finally came home he was in a very poor state - dehydrated, emaciated and with a bed sore. His psoriasis was also terrible.

No one had helped him to eat or drink, although the family and us had stated he needs help. No preventative measures had been employed to avoid bed sores and no one had applied cream to his hands or legs for his psoriasis. He has begged us not to let him go through that again. Sadly the damage is done and he is now so weak and frail that he is on end of life care. I feel like hospitals can be very good a pumping people full of medication but seem to ignore the fact that without the basics of human life e.g. food and drink they will only deteriorate.

We love our residents and take great care of them and feel so angry and upset when others show no care or respect. The excuse is that nurses don't have time to feed people or help them drink - why not? These should be the basics with everything else secondary.

Sadly this is not an isolated incident as we have other similar stories and not just from one hospital but 3 in our locality.

It is about time the common sense and compassion was put back into our hospitals to stop people suffering and dying needlessly from pure neglect.