The treatment of Alzheimer's disease patients in UK hospitals is a 'disgrace'

The Telegraph reports that the treatment of Alzheimer's disease patients in Britain's hospitals is so poor that many relatives are driven to complain, and many more would like to complain. Some patients are going hungry because they were not helped to eat or drink and many are generally treated with a lack of basic dignity and respect. The Alzheimer’s Society has said that the situation is a “disgrace”.

Dementia is by no means an inevitable consequence of aging. You can reduce your risk of developing dementia or any of a host of illnesses commonly, but inaccurately, attributed to aging, by avoiding dieting, by avoiding taking prescription drugs unless they are absolutely necessary, and by seriously cutting down on your intake of salt and salty food.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods

Massive overuse of antipsychotics to treat elderly patients with dementia in UK's hospital wards.

The Telegraph reports on massive overuse of antipsychotics to treat elderly patients with dementia in UK's hospital wards. As well as the article itself, there is a letter today on the letters page of the Telegraph - a letter drawing attention to this scandalous abuse of the human rights of vulnerable citizens. The letter is signed by spokespeople for ten leading charities, carers groups and experts. These drugs cause serious side-effects and increase the risk of death. I am sure that the doctors who prescribe these dangerous drugs would run a mile from themselves being made to take the drugs! There is a similar situation in care homes - dementia patients being overprescribed this pharmaceutical junk, sometimes called a 'chemical cosh'.
But these facts are not new facts. They have long been known but nothing effective has been done to curb this abuse of NHS patients. The letter urges that the government crack down on this overprescribing. When I heard about this on the radio I gained the impression that it is doctors who are largely to blame. But the government must surely have the power to curb the reckless over-prescribing of drugs by our drug-obsessed doctors. - They should do so promptly. - I personally favour making it a criminal offence to prescribe this junk inappropriately, harming the patient. A few successful prosecutions would soon bring down the reckless prescribing rates of doctors.

Another example, from before the big scandal broke, of Stafford Hospital managers covering up abuse and neglect of patients.

The Sunday Telegraph reports that a nurse provided senior managers with details of her concerns in November 2007 - 16 months before the scandal was revealed - and that her report said that doctors and nurses were being ordered to discharge people who were critically ill and to lie about how long others were waiting.

There will be a debate in parliament on Monday, which will hear demands for a public inquiry into the deaths of hundreds of patients at Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust, where standards of care were appalling.

I recommend you read the Sunday Telegraph report. It has a wealth of detail.

Whistleblowers in hospitals are still being ignored.

The Telegraph reports that hospitals are still disregarding whistleblowing members of staff with concerns for the safety of their patients. "More than one in five (21 per cent) said that they had been actively persuaded not to report problems."

It is a similar situation for patients who draw attention to problems - i.e. people who make a justifiable complaint about the way they are treated or have been treated. They often experience, or fear that they will experience, victimisation or reprisals.

Publish Post

When I was speaking to the orthopaedic surgeon earlier this year at my final meeting with him after an operation on my arm that had resulted in a worsening of the problems it had been expected to remediate, I asked him if it would do any good for me to write a letter of complaint to the manager of the hospital. It was a little difficult to get him to commit himself to an answer, but he did eventually say that in his opinion it would do no good whatsoever and would result in no change.

Read this and weep!

Mary Riddell's article in the Telegraph about the horrors of Stafford Hospital and the NHS

As well as Mary Riddell's frank article, be sure to read the comments below it. No-one should comfort themselves that the Stafford Hospital scandal is a one-off. - It very clearly is not.

Another shocking example of lack of compassion in a British hospital: - ordeal of World War Two hero

Dying World War Two hero 'stripped of human dignity' by hospital care, family say
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The family of Brigadier John Platt, who won the Distinguished Service Order for his leadership in one of the fiercest battles of the Italian campaign, told how he was discharged from Salisbury District Hospital, unable to feed himself.

They said he was in a confused state and incontinent, after a stay which left him "degraded and humiliated".

During his five-day spell in a mixed-sex observation ward, his hearing aid was crushed, his false teeth went missing and soiled pyjamas were piled up unwashed in a locker by his bedside, they said.

Knowing he was dying after losing the ability to swallow food, he asked to go home. But no ambulance was available so he was sent in a taxi on an hour-long journey to the care home where he died a few days later.

When his family later complained about the hygiene issues around the soiled pyjamas, the hospital wrote back to say that it was unfortunate that he had been "unable to avail himself" of its laundry service.

It has since apologised to Brig Platt's family for the "unacceptable" nature of his discharge in a taxi in late 2006 and vowed to learn lessons from his ordeal."

NHS hospitals are suffering from a deterioration in the level of compassion shown to patients by clinical staff, a health thinktank has warned.

NHS hospitals 'suffering from lack of compassion'
article in the Telegraph

Extracts:

"Niall Dickson, chief executive of the King's Fund, blamed work pressures, shorter stays in hospital and the greater complexity of medical challenges for staff behaving in a less "feeling" way.

He said that compassion should be a key priority for the boards of every NHS hospital."

"Mr Dickson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I have very little doubt that we've seen a deterioration in the level of compassion that is shown by staff to patients.

"The board of every hospital should be looking at this as one of their top priorities - what is it like for someone who's coming in to be treated, and how can we improve that experience?"

He added: "It's to do with staff facing very difficult situations - because patients are sicker and hospital stays are shorter - rather than them all turning into nasty people.

"If we can't get compassion into our healthcare, the system is failing. It's as fundamental as that.""

I certainly agree that there's a lack of compassion in hospitals. I was in hospital last year for 29 nights. I went in with a complicated fracture of the right humerus. My right hand was working OK and there was no pain from the fracture when I fell and broke the arm and rang for an ambulance, and no pain from the fracture when the ambulance men took me into the Northern General Hospital A and E department. The pain started when the splint (backslab) was put on the arm. This was because of the pressure and weight of the splint.

I explained to 'everyone' - doctors, nurses, etc - that I am a steroid victim and that therefore my skin and veins are very thin-walled and very delicate and painful, and that pressure is very damaging and painful to them and that the splint was causing me extreme pain and I needed to have the operation (fixing the pieces of broken bone together) done as soon as possible. - I'd been admitted to the hospital early on a Thursday morning. I was told the operation would be done on the following day, the Friday, the Saturday, the Sunday or - at the very latest - the Monday. - It was not done on any of these days. - In fact, it was almost a fortnight before the operation was done! - while I had had to endure increasing agony because of this awful wait. I was told that the delay was caused because emergencies had to be dealt with before me. - I believe my plight was an emergency. - Because of that excessive delay, serious, extremely painful and permanent damage was done to my right (dominant) hand. For months I was unable to move it at all. Ever since leaving the hospital I have had to have carers every day.

During the wait my hand became a mass of pins and needles and it swelled up really alarmingly - a large blue domed mound appeared on the back of my hand. It was so immensely swollen the pain was exquisite. The skin was extremely thin and overstretched and vulnerable and the veins too. In this highly vulnerable, oedematous state one morning a staff nurse who was to help me to get washed grabbed hold of the hand to pull it - into the sling, if I remember correctly. - GRABBED HOLD OF IT! - I screamed! - How could anyone do that? - How could anyone not realise the terrible agony and harm done by putting extra pressure on a delicate hand already so overstretched? - How could a staff nurse be so stupid/cruel as to do that?

He then started telling me off! - I believe this was for the benefit of anyone within earshot of the scream, to make it appear that he had not just caused me intense extra pain. - We were behind screens for privacy since I was getting washed, so no-one had seen his stupid action.

He should have given me time to ease my hand into the sling; the other nurses did. It was a difficult manoeuvre to accomplish. But he was still impatient and now tried again to save time BY GRABBING THE OTHER END OF MY ARM - THAT IS, THE UPPER ARM CONTAINING THE BROKEN BITS OF BONE - AND PUSHED FROM THAT SIDE TO GET MY ARM INTO THE SLING! - THE BITS OF BONE GROUND TOGETHER OF COURSE AND I INVOLUNTARILY SCREAMED AGAIN.

He went away in a temper after telling me off again and I was left for about 40 minutes, in great distress, with no clothes on though partly covered by a towel or something, having all the time with my delicate left hand to support the broken right arm in its heavy splint, unable to change position at all, unable to summon assistance by ringing the bell because the vulnerable badly broken arm was not supported by the sling and could not support itself, of course, because the bone was in bits... - He clearly had not told anyone of my plight so that I could be 'rescued'. It was just by chance that a nurse came into the ward and put her head round the screens to see why they were round my bed and was then able to help me.

That man should not be a nurse.

About my stay in Sheffield's Northern General Hospital (2)

The NGH is certainly not one of Britain's dirty hospitals. The ward I was on was cleaned every day and I suppose that other parts of the hospital also were. The cleaners and orderlies impressed me as conscientious and very hard-working.

The staff put a lot of effort into preventing cross infection.


Lose weight and improve your health in many ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

British hospitals are 'among worst for superbugs'

British hospitals 'among worst for superbugs' - Telegraph

Extract:

"British hospitals are among the worst in Europe for superbugs, according to figures published yesterday.

In a league table of 29 countries only Portugal, Malta, Cyprus and Romania have higher proportions of potentially deadly antibiotic-resistant hospital-acquired infections.

Only some forms of superbugs are resistant to antibiotics - including those known as MRSA. They are part of the staphylococcus aureus family of bacteria that can live on the skin or in the nose and can cause a range of illnesses and symptoms from boils and abscesses to life-threatening diseases such as meningitis and septicaemia.

The bacteria become dangerous to patients once they enter the bloodstream and those that are resistant to antibiotics pose the greatest threat.

The European Union's Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) report on communicable diseases ranked countries based on the proportion of S aureus infections found to be antibiotic-resistant.

With an MRSA rate of 44 per cent, Britain was found to be the fifth worst for superbug resistance, behind countries including Greece, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic."

You can boost your own immunity to infection by reducing your intake of salt and salty food. This will improve your health in many other ways too, and will reduce your weight if you are overweight.

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Big rise in deaths, previously unreported, from superbug Clostridium difficile.

Big rise in deaths from 'superbug' - Telegraph

Extract:

"Fears about the real scale of the "superbug" threat in Britain's hospitals were raised yesterday after a report claimed that as many as 26,000 cases of Clostridium difficile had gone unreported in the last three years.

And no fewer than 176,450 people had contracted the bug - known as C. difficile - over that period, the research warned.

Grant Shapps, the Conservative MP who compiled the report, accused the Government of "dramatically underestimating" the extent of C. difficile by not counting anyone under 65 who contracted it.

Mr Shapps used Freedom of Information requests to every acute hospital trust in Britain to compile what he said was "the complete germ map of Britain".

According to his report, the three worst hospitals for C. difficile infections in 2006/07 were University Hospitals of Leicester, with 1,739 cases, North Bristol with 1,324 and Gloucestershire with 1,271."

Death from MRSA, following "awful" care in local hospital.

NHS critic's father dies after 'awful care' - Telegraph

Extract:

"A former nurse who tackled Tony Blair over NHS failures in her daughter's treatment has lost her father to the MRSA superbug.

During the 2001 election campaign Carol Maddocks confronted the Prime Minister during an appearance on the BBC's Question Time programme and told him that the health service was letting down her daughter Alice, who had a rare blood condition. She was later invited to Downing Street where he pledged funding to improve registries of bone marrow donors to help save Alice's life.

Now Mrs Maddocks has described how her father Harry Lister, 74, died an agonising death after contracting MRSA following "awful" care in their local hospital.

"My father was let down by the NHS and we, as a family, are really angry about it. Society now accepts that when we go into hospital we could contract MRSA, but this should not be a risk we run," she told The Sunday Times."

Best and worst hospitals in the UK

Welcome to the Hospital Guide - Telegraph


Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Patricia Hewitt is accused of NHS trust cronyism

Hewitt is accused of NHS trust cronyism

Extracts:

"Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, faced accusations of cronyism last night as figures showed NHS trusts are being packed with Labour activists.

Seven out of 10 people appointed to the boards of hospital and primary care trusts who declared a political affiliation said they were Labour supporters. In contrast, only one in six were Tories and one in eight were Liberal Democrats, according to the independent NHS Appointments Commission.

The Tories said the figures exposed a continuing bias towards Labour supporters."

"Stephen O'Brien, the shadow health minister, said: "We need to take politics out of the NHS. Staff and patients deserve to know that decisions about access to care are driven by good intentions.""

Elderly people in Britain's hospitals and care homes are frequently being left to starve.

See Starving on a spoonful of mash a day

Care home elderly go hungry, says minister

Hungry to be Heard

Youth culture is the death of the old

Hospital starved our grandmother to death, family tells inquest

Hospital starved our grandmother to death, family tells inquest