JessM
Paul - it is an incredibly common experience for older people in hospital to ring their bell and ask for help to go to the toilet and be fobbed off repeatedly. I have seen this with my own eyes and my mother in law, who has been in hospital a few times recently has just confirmed how common it is. Once I found her shaking with pain because she had been forgotten after a request and her call button left out of reach.
There seems to be little priority put on this for some mysterious reason. Also it is so much easier to pop someone onto a commode next to the bed than take five minutes helping them to walk to the toilet. If you do this for a few days an elderly disabled person quickly gets "off their legs" - unable to walk at all. If you point this out the nurses say they will refer to physiotherapy, a if it is not their problem or concern.
Then the patients have to be admitted to a rehab ward for specialist physio to try to get their independence back. Result: more expense to the NHS. They would not "block beds" if they could get themselves to the loo.
I guess my diagnosis of the problem is that those in charge of wards do not adequately manage their nursing assistants and make it clear to them that help in this area is a very high priority. My mother in law used to be a ward sister in a London teaching hospital in the 1950s and she agrees that she would never have allowed such a thing to happen on her ward!
Have you got any suggestions as to how this basic but vital issue can be addressed?
Hello, it's good to be taking part in this webchat, I've had a good read through the whole thread and hope to pick up as many of the points you've made as I can, even if I don't answer every individual question.
I can start by answering JessM, who I notice has posted a couple of times in this thread. You make a really powerful point, which is echoed in a number of other postings. I've been an MP since 1997 and care and dignity for older people has been the thing I have talked about and campaigned on in parliament all of that time, so I feel very strongly when I see the audits, the investigations, the reviews and just yesterday the Commission on Dignity report repeating things that should be common sense, and should be commonplace in our NHS and care services. It really isn't good enough, ever, for someone to be left lying in a bed unattended to, not helped to go to the toilet, not treated as a human being.
For me, as a minister, I'm clear that the answer to the problems that have been so well-documented for so long is not going to be a ministerial edict. There isn't a switch that I can flick that will suddenly turn compassion on where it doesn't exist.
What heartened me about the Commission's report yesterday was that its recommendations were practical and addressed to the medical profession, to the regulators, to the educators and to the organisations that provide care and health. All of them along with the Government must work together now to take forward the actions described in that report.
And one thing I feel particularly strongly about is that we need to ban age discrimination in our health and care system. One of my first acts as a minister was to agree that there should be no exemptions for the NHS from the age discrimination duties. No if buts or maybes.