"My father's stay at Royal Bolton Hospital"

My dad was taken to Royal Bolton Hospital hospital by ambulance, after waiting for 29 hellish hours in A & E, he was admitted to D2.

 His replacement hip ( put in at Bolton hospital 3 years prior) had failed and come out of the socket. It was filled with infection, he was very unwell, in  a great deal of pain & developed shingles & delirium. 

On D2 he was given the wrong medication,  which resulted in the operation to remove the faulty hip being delayed for 24 hours. We found other patients’ tablets on the floor by his feet. He was neglected  & ignored. Other agitated patients with dementia were allowed to wander into his side room unchallenged. We had to remove them. On visiting,  we found him unobserved, seated, hanging off the edge of the bed ( at this stage without a hip) one slipper on, both feet in a puddle of urine, he had a gown half on half off, he had ripped his canula from his arm, it was on the floor.

 

He had been left for so long that the urine on his shorts had dried and so had the blood on his hospital gown.  He was in a side room with the curtain pulled across , no one could see him and nobody checked him.

 

On questioning the nurses, one suggested that it was water on the floor. I pointed out that it couldn’t be as his water had been placed on his table far across the room where he couldn’t reach it. It was full, with a lid on.

 

He was later moved to G3, where 3 weeks after he was admitted we were informed by a deputy ward manager that he was going to be discharged in 2 days. This was despite him being in pain, taking oxycodone, having antibiotics by IV and still having delirium. They were unaware that he had delirium and assumed that he had Alzheimer’s. This was despite me telling several nurses over a period of days that the confusion was not his baseline. They postponed his discharge. 

He fell on this ward, it was a ‘guided fall’ meaning somebody saw him and grabbed him as he fell to the ground. He was allowed to walk unaided despite having no hip, being frail & having delirium. There was no communication at all from the nurses despite a family member visiting every day. We were often treated as an inconvenience any time we asked any questions.

 

The lowest point was when my dad escaped ( their choice of word) the ward. He was looking for his family.  I visited my dad later on during the day it happened and found out by chance after I had been there for an hour. 

I asked for some medication for him, & the nurse who came to deliver it nonchalantly told me my dad had escaped today whilst half laughing. I was infuriated and asked the nurse how. Their reply was that they had been busy, they said my dad hadn’t got far off the ward. When I was dissatisfied with their response (dismissive and spoke to me with their eyes glued to a monitor) they referred me to a deputy ward manager. 

I pointed out the failures in their safeguarding & asked what measures would be put in place to prevent it happening again. The deputy ward manager eventually said that they would have somebody present on the ward, and said that all they could do was apologise. I asked how my dad got back to the ward. They said a porter brought him back, but they had no further details when I asked them. 

I located the porter who said my dad (aged 76, with delirium, with no hip, very frail & taking opiates for pain) had gone up to the next floor of the hospital in the lift and went to the theatres. The porter found him slumped against a wall. My dad could have been outside on the road. Nobody noticed! My dad told me that he had fallen on his hip and knees. The staff dismissed this and said he had delirium, yet my dad recounted the whole tale of his trip in the lift and that turned out to be true. Nobody bothered to contact me to tell me whether he had been checked over by a doctor after this incident. 

The porter informed both me and the ward that day & it turned out that the deputy ward manager could do a lot more than apologise. Once they knew that I knew what had happened, they called me to tell me that they had now escalated the matter to a doctor and the ward manager and had put a DOLS into place. None of this would have happened had I not sought out the truth from the porter. 

We were given no information at any stage of his treatment. We had to ask for everything & it was very piecemeal & contradictory. Lots of the staff were uncaring & brusque. 

I eventually complained to the ward manager, who apologised & said that they had just come back off holiday.

The very next day my dad had 2 visitors, one in the afternoon & one in the evening. Not one nurse spoke to the daytime visitor, nobody would have spoken to the evening visitor either had the visitor not approached them to ask after my dad’s progress.

It was then that the visitor discovered that they planned  to soon discharge him to a rehab/ nursing home despite him having delirium, taking oxycodone (an opiate) being very frail, in pain & having no hip. This is because he was suddenly classed as being medically fit.

It wasn’t mentioned the day before at 5 pm when I complained to the ward manager. I don’t think it was any coincidence that this happened at that point. And yet again, we were not told. There isn’t a large enough word count allowed here to document all the inadequacies that happened. 

I fear for anyone who has to be admitted there and has nobody to advocate for them.