Disgracefully poor care for elderly patients in some UK hospitals

Today's is but the latest of the litany of shameful reports of Britain's substandard treatment of elderly, vulnerable people in NHS hospitals. In the Telegraph we read: "Unacceptable care has become standard in some trusts, with doctors and nurses talking down to patients, ignoring their calls for assistance and failing to help them eat, drink or wash. After carrying out spot checks at geriatric wards in 100 hospitals, the commission found that 35 needed to make improvements, 18 were failing to meet legal standards and there were “major concerns” at two trusts."

This has rightly been the top news item today, both in print and on the broadcast media. There are always apologists with their ever-ready excuses of insufficient cash/time/nurses/resources, of course, but this will cut no ice with people who have experienced the routine 'uncare' for themselves, or have visited neglected elderly patients on these wards of shame. "Katherine Murphy, the chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “Yet another report to add to the plethora of other reports, all highlighting the same issues around poor care of elderly patients in hospital. "How many reports do we have to look at and how many times do the public need to hear about this before the right action is taken?”"

Why does nothing improve? - I'll tell you why: because no-one is held accountable. - Remember, despite presiding over the avoidable suffering and deaths of around 400 patients at that infamous, inhuman Stafford hospital between January 2005 and March 2009, Martin Yeates, claiming to be 'ill', was allowed to cry off even attending at the public inquiry into the scandal! Furthermore he received a golden handshake - £400,000 (that's a thousand pounds for each death!) - and has a jewel-encrusted pension to look forward to, as well as being able to apply for other obscenely-highly paid similar jobs in another area! Instead of being tried in a criminal court for the manslaughter of hundreds of his fellow-citizens, this scoundrel has been richly rewarded for his dereliction of duty.

When grave wrongdoing incurs no sanction, there will be no reform. We have read today of hospitals that are 'failing to meet legal standards'. - Very well, let's see the people responsible for this tried in court and sentenced appropriately. That would very soon result in better care for vulnerable patients.

Is the unaccountability of NHS staff the greatest threat to the health of UK citizens?

Is the unaccountability of NHS staff the greatest threat to the health of UK citizens? - Certainly many people would be of that opinion - especially if they have had personal experience of serious NHS negligence or a member of their family has suffered because of it. - Until you experience the NHS Complaints Procedures for yourself you can have no conception of how useless, evil and corrupt they are: how the NHS routinely and literally gets away with murder. Read in today's Telegraph report how despite presiding over the avoidable suffering and deaths of around 400 patients at that infamous, inhuman Stafford hospital between January 2005 and March 2009, Martin Yeates is not even going to appear at the public inquiry into the scandal. Like many another overpaid apology for a public servant he is claiming to be too ill to be questioned. - That 'illness' is Cowardice.

Hospitals still cover up poor standards and neglect and still give scant regard to complaints

UK hospitals still cover up poor standards and neglect and still give complaints scant regard. See this Telegraph report. I strongly suggest reading the comments beneath the report too. Unaccountability shames our health service and ensures that its many failings continue. I know from horrifying personal experience the cruel futility of complaining about NHS treatment.

Can there be another country that treats elderly patients worse than the UK?

Frankly, I doubt it. So many times I have blogged about elderly patients in UK hospitals being left unfed or underfed, dehydrated because no one gave them a drink of water, lying in bed in pain and in misery, humiliation and excreta, because no one had the decency or compassion to take them to the toilet or help them onto a commode or bedpan, often with bedsores or avoidable injuries because of poor nursing. Over and over and over and over again we read accounts of such awful suffering. It makes you sick to the stomach and sick at heart. This is our much-vaunted NHS! These are our healthcare professionals.

Yesterday was another of these days of shame, the news media full of the scandalous 'care' accorded to elderly patients in 3 hospitals in particular - 3 in particular out of 12 hospitals that the Care Quality Commission inspected unannounced and were appalled by. See this BBC News report. Yes, I know that not every British hospital and not every nurse treats elderly vulnerable patients in this disgracefully cruel way, but how does that excuse the ones that do?

What do we routinely hear after such sordid revelations? - It is usually a statement couched in strange jargon-ridden gobbledygook that favours weasel words and the passive voice. We are told that 'lessons have been learned' and other lies. And nothing changes. No one is arraigned and charged for their cruelty and neglect, no one is even sacked, for their dereliction of duty, for their failure to fulfil their duty of care. We all pay a great deal of money by way of taxes for our massively flawed NHS. Some of us, especially the elderly and the vulnerable, are getting a very poor deal indeed.