Yesterday I staggered into the office. Bloody cold. Must start wearing a hat or unfashionable silk headscarf to keep the draughts off. Romy had been in since daybreak beavering away, since the trains are so hopeless she decided to start very early. My computer still missing, annoyingly.
On BBC 4 this morning, a news report about neglect of the elderly in hospital, especially with regard to feeding and personal hygiene. Nurses are so highly trained these days and no one wants to change and clean up patients, and because of health and safety regulations two nurses have to change patients. I am sure that the allegations are true throughout the country in most hospitals. When my mother was in the John Radcliffe before she died, I had to ask the nurses to change her every time I visited. At least they did it. A couple of years before when visiting another elderly lady in Guy's, we asked the nurse and we were told that two nurses had to do it. We asked where the clean sheets were kept and did it ourselves. In addition, food was left on this paralysed stroke victim's trolley where she could not reach it. In fact she needed spoon feeding and was obviously starving as she very quickly ate all the food her daughter brought in for her. I suppose they could tell relatives to bring in the food for patients as they do in Spain and elsewhere. The official answer seems to be to appoint a patients champion in hospitals. Bollocks. They need to appoint many more ancillary nursing staff to perform these essential functions, or make trained nurses do it all, even if it means appointing many more nurses. I do approve of the idea of bringing back an independent complaints system. Especially since I ran a CHC for ten years.
There is also a survey stating that there is very little specialist care from consultants out of hours and at weekends. It would be good to see consultants dragged away from their golf courses and put on duty rotas to cover these times.
More bloody snow last night. Kooky very displeased. I shall force myself out to work for a short day. I do hope my groceries arrive this evening.
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