Health and Social Care

Ann Clwyd Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the 2,500 people from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland who have written to me since last December, when I first raised the issue of compassion in nursing. The e-mails keep coming and I want to quote from some of them.

A man whose elderly mother was in hospital asked how many staff it takes to cut a fingernail:

“The hospital staff won’t cut my mother’s fingernails. They won’t clean them properly either. The excuse given to me is that this amounts to an ‘assault on patients.’”

My mother…has for the past several weeks been positive for a new superbug which is carried in faeces and would cause havoc if it got into the bloodstream…she’s in an isolation ward now. Barrier nursing, rubber gloves and pinnies for all staff and visitors. And still the nurses won’t do her fingernails, and they can’t or won’t see that filth under fingernails or wherever it is located, is intolerable in hospitals and needs to be eliminated—most especially in infection control units.”

The e-mail continued:

“I had a rant at the…staff for leaving the buzzer button and water out of reach of bedridden patients [i.e. people in beds near to my mother who were calling out to anyone for water]. My mother’s buzzer was also out of reach. I was then told these elderly patients might strangle themselves on a buzzer’s cable.

My mother tells me that if staff are dealing with a patient [e.g. bathroom visit] when the food trolley arrives then sometimes the patient may not get any meal. It is delivered, uneaten, and taken away. The idea the patient might still be in the land of the living and come back to their bed later and need some food seems not to bother them”.

A man whose father was on a ventilator wrote:

“There were no issues with the treatment he received, but the comment I received when going to say goodbye to him when the decision was taken by medics to switch off the machine is not one I will ever forget. After going to see him and saying goodbye, the nurse—whose Christian name and face I will always remember—said to me, ‘Can we crack on now?’”

A woman whose husband died of cancer at 53 after, she alleges, years of mistreatment and misdiagnosis wrote:

“When I complained to PALS—”

the patient advice and liaison service, which some hospitals have—

“my initial complaint was ignored. So I complained to the chief exec. I had several meetings with PALS and was told they would do an independent review. This took them two years and they denied any wrongdoing. No proper investigation took place. I then contacted a solicitor and had an expert review of the case. He said the treatment was nothing short of criminal…it has taken me four years of fighting for justice. They have now finally admitted liability for breach of care and duty and causing his death. But what happens to those responsible? Nothing. This was not one mistake, it was a catalogue of errors that went on for 3 years. They should be tried for manslaughter.”

A man whose wife suffered mistreatment wrote that

“she was regularly left to lie in her own faeces for half an hour or longer, and on more than one occasion for well over an hour. This led to a severe rash on her backside to the point that her bottom and the backs of both thighs were red and raw. The buzzer would be left hanging out of reach, either by accident or on purpose…at one point she was lucky enough to be able to reach her mobile phone as she rang me in tears during the middle of the night asking me to ring the high-dependency unit desk as she’d been desperate for a nurse…I had to bring her a fresh bottle of water every evening so that she could sleep with it in bed as the water on her tray was often pushed out of reach after her visitors had left for the night.

She was never weighed when in hospital despite multiple requests of both doctors and family. The staff allowed her muscles to atrophy to the point she could not even get herself out of bed…she was so badly undernourished, many family members doubted if she would ever come out of hospital.”

A woman writing about her mother’s mistreatment stated that

“nurses frequently chatted and laughed at the nurses’ station at night, showing a complete lack of consideration and respect for patients. Standards of cleanliness left much to be desired, and we were sometimes greeted by soiled dressings left lying around and on one occasion, splashes of blood which did not appear to be hers, left over the end of the bed. Generally there was poor liaison between the two hospitals and the GP, with outpatient consultant appointments being sent to my mother’s home address, when she was in hospital dying. We did not complain at the time as we were too distressed by my mother’s condition and after she had died unable to bear reliving her last months.”

A man wrote to plead that the right kind of person is selected and supported for a nursing job:

“I have seen nurses walk onto a ward chatting loudly about their social life, approach a patient and see to his needs while continuing their loud chat, apparently oblivious to the sad human bundle they were treating, as if it was a spare tyre that they were changing. I expect you have seen groups of nurses chatting at the nurses’ station and ignoring patients on their ward who are calling out for a nurse. Yes, we know, some of these will be demented or disorientated souls who do not need medical attention as such and are possibly a regular nuisance, but they are in the care of those nurses and should not be ignored.”

A woman, who after the experience of her last operation is dreading the next one, wrote:

“Upon being admitted I was placed in a storage area and left for hours in pain, and alone, and very frightened. A specialist came and took a cursory look and said I was to go home and come back the next day. I live alone and was very unwell to say the least. I became very upset and was treated like a naughty child. I then blacked out and upon waking I was in a bed with some very anxious nurses around me…I had blood poisoning. A nurse later stated that, ‘We have lost patients not as bad as you have been’. Later that night my abscess burst. I called a nurse who looked at the bed and then told me to sleep on a clean bit!”

One of the biggest problems is that of patients being starved. One account describes cleaners who

“put trays at the bottom of beds—unhygienic for a start—then come around half an hour later and lift the trays. Nobody checks to see if the patient has eaten it. It is fortunate if visitors or some of the better patients are around to help the more frail. I never saw any staff feed or help patients to sit up...I hope this is not common practice, but sadly I fear it is.”