Posted on 05/26/2011 3:11:16 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Doctors are prescribing drinking water for neglected elderly patients to stop them dying of thirst in hospital.
The measure – to remind nurses of the most basic necessity – is revealed in a damning report on pensioner care in NHS wards.
Some trusts are neglecting the elderly on such a fundamental level their wards could face closure orders.
The snapshot study, triggered by a Mail campaign, found staff routinely ignored patients’ calls for help and forgot to check that they had had enough to eat and drink.
Dehydration contributes to the death of more than 800 hospital patients every year.
Another 300 die malnourished. The latest report – by the Care Quality Commission – found patients frequently complained they were spoken to in a ‘condescending and dismissive’ manner.
The watchdog said three of 12 NHS trusts visited in the past three months were failing to meet the most basic standards required by law.
They were: Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust and Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust in North London.
The findings follow a joint campaign by the Mail and the Patients Association last year which exposed shocking examples of substandard care.
Similar failings were highlighted earlier this year by the Health Service Ombudsman who cited cases of patients left to become so thirsty they could not cry for help. Since February, a team of inspectors from the CQC – including a nurse and an elderly patient – have been visiting 100 NHS trusts unannounced to check elderly patients are treated with dignity.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Just Damn...words fail me....
coming soon with Obamacare...but heck, we will save so much money for more bailouts for the Unions!
maybe we should just put a Union T shirt on the elderly!
Government-run health care....and its coming to America very soon, unless we can de-fund the monstrosity and, one hopes, the Supreme Court finds it unconstitutional, which it certainly is.
pathetic. Coming soon to America if we don’t stop the evil kenyan.
I guess British nurses don’t takt the Florence Nightingale PLedge....
I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly, to pass my life in purity and to practice my profession faithfully. I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug. I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession, and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling. With loyalty will I endeavor to aid the physician, in his work, and devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care.
Coming soon to a hospital near you, thanks to his Most Golfing Excellency. . .
Welcome to socialist “medicine” — aka “death panels.”
This is no accident... The employees of these government run facilities are ORDERED to accomplish the deaths of these elderly individuals, so to keep costs down. Socialized healthcare = GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED GENOCIDE against the old, the infirm, and anybody else that the government determines of no use to the State. The people that run these agencies are on the same level as Hitler or Stalin or Mao... There is no practical difference. They have an identical mind set.
Years ago....in a Air Force emergency care class...we spent twenty minutes on dehydration. Its a curious thing that a lot of folks simply don’t realize they are dehydrated and start to push themselves to the extreme. Sure they had a cup of water an hour ago in 95-plus degrees and have been walking around...not feeling thirsty. So we got the lecture to enforce drinking of water at various points in a physical situation (sandbags, digging, loading a truck, etc).
We are simply missing various signals and the elderly are even more susceptible to missing them. Ten years ago in Europe, there was a 95-plus degree period that lasted around five weeks. In France, at least a thousand older folks died from dehydration....sipping more wine than water...which is a bad habit of French folks in general. In Germany...it was less than a dozen old folks who died from the heat, and it was pointed out that older Germans typically drunk wine only after the sun went down...and stayed mostly on water throughout the day.
So, this is not a stupid suggestion. Just keep up a regular regiment of a cup of water each hour if you are doing physical activity on a really hot day.
isn’t socialist medicine just awesome??
NOT
Ahhh, government run health care (for the masses). Of course, our masters will be getting the very best care our tax dollars can buy. But for the peons, not so much...
Anybody else remember the “scandal” of how injured veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan were being housed in buildings that were pretty much falling down at (I believe) Walter Reed?
Anybody else remember back when the Kansas City, MO VA hospital was nearly closed down by the KCMO health department, because of vermin infestation (rats could be seen running out in the open at all hours) and some of the patients’ wounds were festering with maggots?
Mark
It has been my experience in caring for elderly relatives and friends, especially those with mental deficiencies, that they will not request or even demand the most basic care. Most places don't have enough staff or have staff that just doesn't give a flip whether or not they are doing their job and caring for patients.
“The measure – to remind nurses of the most basic necessity”
Get use to it. I had a nurse tell me the other day that she shouldn’t have to take a critical lab report on a patient because she didn’t order the test. I was easy to see how interested she was in taking care of the patient. Everyone is important but no one is responsible.
nursing homes nurses are horribly overwhelmed. This is a symptom of a bad system as much as it is a bad nurse. I have worked on a floor that would be considered a nursing home. I had 11 patients and got an admission that made 12. The admission took about 2.5 hours to complete. That left me with 9.5 hours to take care of 12 patients. That leaves me with 47.5 minutes per patient. Charting on each patient takes approximately 17 minutes each. That leaves 30 minutes per patient. Each patient gets a physical assessment. A thorough physical assessment takes about 10 minutes. That leaves 7 minutes left per patient or 84 minutes total. So, you now have 1 hour and 24 minutes minutes to safely pass medications to 12 people. That may or may not be enough time depending on the meds and the patients.
Notice I haven’t mentioned a lunch, a break, going to the bathroom, or doing any kind of dressing changes, or helping people go to the bathroom, or extenuating circumstances that require calling physicians and taking orders, drawing blood, starting IVs, cleaning up poop and pee, walking up and down the halls checking patients, turning patients every two hours, obtaining vital signs, writing/taping report for the oncoming shift, talking to the patients and/or their families, etc. I have worked on other floors where I had 5 patients that were so complicated that they took even more time to deal with incidentally. Nurses are being asked to do too much. This is the healthcare system you got. Firing more nurses won’t fix it, it will more likely collapse it. I think I should have been a plumber. I would be paid more, worked less, and held to a lesser standard. Plumbers don’t go to jail when they eff up your sink installation.
I will just add that in this world, for whatever reason, standards, tolerances, and general quality is slipping in just about everything. Why would healthcare be any different? Doing more with less is a great idea but in reality, it doesn't work so well. Worse yet, patients are living longer but keeping them living longer requires more complicated and more resource consuming care. The system is incredibly strained.
I realize that the article is talking about the UK incidentally. Things aren't that much better here and I don't think it's going to get better.
Coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
Where is your CNAs?
Coming soon to an Obamacare hospital near you.
They definitely help but they’re spread pretty thin themselves such that coordinating with them becomes difficult. I find also that no matter how busy I find myself, they always manage to find time to take both 15 minutes breaks and a 30 minute lunch and, all too often, multiple smoke breaks. I’m lucky to squeeze a 15 minutes lunch into my 13 hour shift (I show up 30 minutes early). I see a lot of nursing home patients at one of the long term acute care facilities I work for. It’s pretty obvious to me that our nursing homes are also languishing under the do more with less mentality-decubitus ulcers, aspiration, dehydration, protein malnourishment, facility acquired infections, etc. Nurses are becoming scape goats for bad policies, failing systems, and unrealistic expectations. Incidentally, the hospital that my GF works for just eliminated all the CNA positions. It’s all primary care now. That ought to go over well.
I would guess a lot of weird behavior seen in elderly patients there could be because they are at one stage of dehydration or another.
Being really thirsty is about 1-2% dehydrated. Around 5% and you start seeing stuff. At 10% dehydrated you can die.
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