"No communication at Southmead Hospital"

My mother who is 90 had a stroke on in the middle of August the paramedics were wonderful and she was in Frenchay within the hour.

Upon her transfer to Southmead the whole scenario deteriorated beyond belief.

I visited her on the day she was transferred to be told she was not there, not on the nurses board and no one knew where she was eventually she was found.We visited her every visiting time to find dirty bed linen left on the bin ( not in a bag) a soiled bed sheet left for at least 4 hours on top of her toilet bag in full view of everyone passing the room and a pair of heavily soiled knickers ( faeces) thrown on the floor under a chair , again unbagged. All this while they were deep cleaning another part of the ward. I complained to the matron by e mail as the hospital were unco-operative about who to contact and received an apology.

My mother is unable to use her right hand and was left with her food to feed herself as she could not do this without wearing the food for the rest of the day so she stopped eating.

She contracted pneumonia and whilst suffering, Occupational therapy, speech therapy and physio were on her chart each day. When she(thankfully) recovered they were not scheduled at all.

Her discharge was not confirmed until the night before but I had made arrangements to get her bedroom ready, her profiling bed arrived with no mattress, I was told by the hospital the district nurse was organising and by the district nurse she was not. I made her bed up with the old mattress from her own bed as her mattress was to come the day she was delivered home but we did not know whether this was before she got home or afterwards As it was the mattress turned up 3 hours after she did.

Whilst she was in the transport lounge waiting to come home the O/T called me 1 hour before the transport to say if there was a problem with the mattress they would take her back to the ward.