The Patients Association highlights appalling standards of NHS hospital care for the elderly, giving examples of patients left dehydrated or lying in faeces, blood and urine.

BBC News reports that many elderly patients are receiving appalling care in NHS Hospitals.

The Patients Association highlights appalling standards of NHS hospital care for the elderly, giving examples of patients left dehydrated or lying in faeces, blood and urine.

Claire Rayner, formerly a nurse, now President of the Patients Association said: "I am sickened by what has happened to some part of my profession of which I was so proud. These bad, cruel nurses may be - probably are - a tiny proportion of the nursing workforce, but even if they are only one or two per cent of the whole they should be identified and struck off the Register."

Government chief nursing officer Chris Beasley said: "All patients deserve the highest quality of care from the NHS and the poor care received in these cases is simply unacceptable." Apologists for poor standards of NHS 'care' customarily add, as Chris Beasley adds here in this report, that the 'vast majority of patients experience good quality, safe and effective care."

I am willing to concede that possibly a slight majority of patients are reasonably satisfied, but to claim this to be a 'vast' majority is way off the mark. Most people put up with a lot of substandard care, knowing that complaints are unwelcome and tend to provoke reprisals, this being particularly the case with the more vulnerable and elderly, frail patients.