Share review of Queen Alexandra Hospital

Queen Alexandra Hospital 2019-01-28 Person 0 5 0

I am the daughter of a 89 year old Mother that was admitted to QA on the 21st September, 2018 about midday. When I went to see my Mother in the evening she was in the AMU slumped in a chair rather than being put in the bed beside. I asked if someone could help me put her into the bed as she kept passing out in the chair as she was in so much pain as her right arm was under the arm rest. I was told someone would come and help but nobody came for a good half an hour to help lie her down on the bed. Before she went on the AMU she was able to use her arm but two days later my Mother was unable to use her arm. On the Monday I telephoned to ask if the CT scan had been done and was told everything was OK with the scan. When my two children went in later that day they were told that another doctor had looked at the scan and they were told their grandmother had had a stroke. There were not beds on the stroke ward so I said I would get a private ambulance and take her to Chichester where I knew they had beds on the Stroke ward. Later that day I was told they had found a bed. In the Stroke ward my Mother was treated as if she was end of life, probably as in their eyes 89 wasn't worth working too hard with. In F3, Mother was left in day clothes when she was put to bed and didn't have her teeth done for three weeks until I complained. With a paralysed arm she was not helped with her food. I witnessed her food come and go with a member of staff from the kitchen. No intervention by nurses or recorded in her notes as to how much she was eating. Again, I had to intervene and a young nurse was then asked to help her. By this time my Mother had lost weight and was feeling quite week. My mother asked for drinks and was told they would get it later as they were busy. Consequently, she suffered UTI's and was told to drink more! She would if she had been given it. Always on my visit each day I had to go and get drinks for her. My Mother was told, without a family member present, that she would probably never walk again which totally devastated her. I arrived and she told me what had been said and she felt she didn't want to live. The woman in the bed opposite called me across and said she had been so worried about my Mother because she had decided not to eat or take her medicine. On one visit my Mother said she was desperate to go to the toilet. I had to go outside the ward and spoke to the Sister who said it wasn't her job and to go back to the bed and press the button which I did. Nobody came after 15 minutes so I pressed the button again. After another 15 minutes still no one, so I went outside to the ward and said to the Sister who was sitting at the table outside the door that nobody had been. I saw a nurse coming out of the next ward and I asked if he would be able to help her. This Sister then said to me in a raised voice "We can't all run around your Mother when she wants something - we are short of staff and you'll have to wait". After that a catheter was fitted I am sure because it was easier to empty the bag beside her bed than to get someone to hoist her out of bed. I was told it was because she had retention but I was not totally convinced. Then she suffered UTI’s I’m sure due to the catheter. For someone so independent as my Mother was, and who as I said is 89 but is more like 70, the last thing she wants to do is wet herself. My Mother kept saying to me she wanted to leave before she felt she would be going out in a coffin so I started the process of trying to get her discharged. I was told by Sally Wood OT that my Mother had said she wanted to stay in hospital and that she would have to come out to my Mother’s house to look at her facilities before she would be allowed to go home. Sally Wood visited my Mother’s house and walked into the lounge. She asked where I was thinking of putting my Mother. I said that I wanted her bed in the lounge (considering she could not walk as she had a paralysed leg and arm). Her first question was where was her bedroom. I said upstairs and was surprised that she was so keen to look at it as she could not get out of bed on her own not along get upstairs. Whilst in the bedroom she asked where the bathroom was so I pointed her across the corridor. Sally Wood then told me that the door didn’t go right back onto the wall as there was a narrow radiator on the wall behind and that I needed to rehang the door. I replied that I would if my Mother was ever able to get up the stairs in the future. We went downstairs and she then checked the sofa for the measurements from the top of the cushion to the floor and then went to check whether the kitchen cabinets were the right height for my Mother. I said they had been for the last 30 years but as she wasn’t able to get out of bed without a hoist I didn’t think this was going to matter much. Sally Wood then told me again that my Mother didn’t want to leave the hospital and that legally she could keep my Mother in hospital. I reminder her that my Mother had mental capacity and as such could discharge herself if she wanted to. I asked her to please organise any hospital equipment that she needed for her return home. Sally Wood said she would update me at the discharge meeting. At the discharge meeting, of which I have never had the minutes of, Sally Wood then told me that she had no intention of ordering any hospital equipment for my Mother’s house and that she ought to stay in the hospital for another 3-4 weeks. If I had left her there she would have died – and that is no exaggeration. My daughter then wrote to PALS of which we have never had a reply from. Sally Wood was taken off the case and we then had Jim Oldham appointed. Jim helped me to learn how to hoist and arranged for all the equipment to be delivered to her home. My remarks about my Mother’s independence was not listened to. When I said she had been dealing and working with ponies, driving tractors, driving her car, doing all her gardening, housework, shopping and cooking she needed the motivation and help that she deserved. The only person who really listened to her was Dr Jaymik Patel who came and asked my Mother, with myself in attendance, what she wanted to do. Did she want to stay in hospital or go home? Her reply was – “I want to go home, I probably don’t have long to live and I want to see my dog, the ponies and my grandchildren”. I really believe it was after this that my Mother’s discharge was taken seriously. I have to say the time she was in the hospital was nothing but frustration. This is a time when you are grieving for a person that has probably lost her mobility and her independence and all I had was an uphill battle with the staff. Sally Wood seemed to have a tick box sheet rather than using common sense and sensitivity and not everyone fits into a tick box. To be told by her that the Community Stroke team will not come out to my Mother because we are taking her out of hospital earlier than she should go was not right. Every patient has a right to follow up treatment. When the Community Stroke team came out to see my Mother I had the feeling that they had been told she was bedridden and not worth persevering with. It was only the fact that I had taken a video of my Mother using her arm three days after she came out of the hospital, which she could not use in hospital, that when I showed them this they said they would come out and see her. The Community Stoke team managed by Kate Lutman and Mel Aquino, who have come out to my Mother, have been brilliant. I cannot speak highly enough of them and their team. They have given me so much support and have been working with my Mother that I believe even they have been so surprised as to how much my Mother has recovered. I think perhaps a lesson learned is that family members can be very productive to the recovery of a patient even when they are in hospital and staff should have the time to speak and find out more about their patients. Family members might not be trained in medical procedures but do not forget they have common sense and know the patient and their history and what they have been capable of rather than categorising them and devastating them by telling them they probably will not walk again. Nobody knows what will happen in the future. It would be better to say they need time to see how their recovery will go. All patients need hope and encouragement for them to believe in themselves so they can make some improvement.