I know we have discussed this before but I couldn't find it. It may upset some folk as I know, despite trying not to, this may well turn into a rant.
I had to travel up to Glasgow at the weekend to visit my mum in hospital. I can't tell you how shocked I was at the cruel, Hitler-like, monstrous, antiquated ways of the staff. Perhaps I'm expecting too much of nurses to want them to treat my mother - all three and a half stone of her - with a wee bit of compassion and care. Perhaps I'm expecting too much to want to turn up at the ward to see her outside of the visiting hours. And perhaps I'm expecting too much to want information about my mother's health.
I found the whole experience of my mum in hospital really quite perplexing and frustrating. They were very evasive on the telephone and there was never anyone available to give me any information. Despite asking several times - at one point, begging - to speak to her on a telephone, it transpired that they are still living in a previous century and a communication device actually going to the prisoner, oops, patient, would have been impossible.
When I got there and remonstrated with them to let me in outside of the visiting hours and they so generously allowed me 5 minutes, I was upset at how just so flaming depressing the whole room was. It was lovely and new and modern but the whole atmosphere was horrible: six elderly women lying in beds all so sad and I have to say, neglected.
Once I got over the barricades, the lure of the chat and chocolates at the nurses' station proved too much for the staff and I was soon forgotten so my stay carried over to visiting hours - over two hours where not a single patient was seen. One poor soul couldn't get her bedcovers down and I had to go help her but I was well aware of the dangers if she had slipped or anything. My own frail mum needed to go to the toilet and insisted she go without her zimmer frame so I managed to guide her there. I asked a nurse to take her in as there was no need for my mum to have her daughter see her, ablutions-wise, but it was clear that was not going to happen. Eventually, a lovely nurse from the ward next door took her in and I swear she was the ONLY person there with any compassion.
There are lots of other tales I could tell but suffice to say I am in despair over it all. I live so far away and my father is in his eighties. My brother (who was on holiday this last fortnight) had once complained about the treatment and presumably because this is on the front of my mother's notes, is treated like a pariah whatever ward she is moved to. So complaining isn't an option and I know that sounds awful.
And this is a major teaching hospital? One that is respected and one I grew up with and where many of my teenage peers trained as nurses and took those skills all over the world. I still maintain that the NHS is the greatest thing at the point of need but this has shocked me to the core. I practically cried all the journey home.
Is it something to do with the fact that nurses all have to study for degrees now and having to take a fuddled auld wumman to the toilet is beneath them? Is it that they are all overworked and not enough staff? Is it that they simply don't get trained any more in simple caring skills or is this not a fundamental and human attribute, certainly for someonewho wants to be a nurse?
Put simply, there was just no bloody DIGNITY.