"Mam's treatment"

Have to say from the start that the majority of the staff, especially one doctor and a lot of the nurses were brilliant compared to the treatment my Mam received in University Hospital Durham.

Mam was transferred to the renal unit from there in early June, she was there for 6 days all told. On the third day her condition rapidly deteriorated (Saturday), on the Sunday we got a call at lunchtime from the hospital (which was a nightmare to get through to by telephone by the way, even the hospital room telephone which you pay for was not working and the ward telephone was "off the hook for some reason").

The Doctor who had seen Mam on Sunday wanted to see her family before he finished his rounds at 2pm. We immediately went to the hospital, and waited until around 3pm + before the Dr decided to grace us.

What I heard said, in front of Mam (a 79yr old decent, lovely woman) was quite frankly totally unnecessary and out of order. To quote, “the chances of death between hospital and home are high”. This was said in front of my Mam, in front of myself, brother and disabled sister. It was more or less said that he had stopped all treatment as "it is not necessary", i.e. it's a waste of time.

Mam died only 3 days from being released from this hospital on the Tuesday and I hope to never have to see any of my family go through what she went through and be spoken to and about like this ever again.

Even district nurses who attended afterwards at home were shocked that she was sent home, more or less to die (which we did not really realise at the time) without proper medical interventions in place.

It is about time that the NHS treated older people with proper respect and dignity and stopped treating them as an inconveinience.