"Appalled at lack of Dementia and..."

What I liked

Paramedic and Ambulance services were brilliant.

What could be improved

Many more staff. Especially trained with Elderly patients and diagnosing of delirium.

Dignity, such as again having enough staff to accompany patients to the toilet instead of needless catheterising to save workload

Enable carers to visit elderly and confused patients out of hours

Anything else?

My father has dementia and quickly gets confused in a strange enviroment . Every time we accompany him to hospital we explain this several times and always get the " he'll be fine" answer. I have offered to stop with him whilst being given blood or fluids to lessen the chance of him pulling lines from his arms, but again "he'll be fine". He isn't fine and as expected removes all lines and catheters and climbs the bed rails. He has very short term memory in familiar surroundings and therefore again is highly unlikely to press a buzzer in hospital to attract a nurse. We explain this to the nurses but again they rely on dads politeness as a measure of his understanding and capacity. I understand the mental capacity act etc, but when will the hospital understand that sometimes relatives ARE experts at knowing their own kin? The whole experience is made more of a nightmare than it needs to be and Dad ends up with substandard,late,prolonged treatment because they won't admit to having little idea of Mental Health problems, and short staff.