The nurse pulled back the covers and I recoiled instinctively. It wasn’t so much the sight of the raw flesh that made me feel ill as the smell.

“It must have been like this for months,” said the nurse. “How can they claim to be caring for this poor woman when they leave her to develop sores like this?”

Mrs Millward smiled: “Oh, don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

The nurse and I looked at each other. “This is really serious,” I said. “You’ve got a pressure sore, and these shouldn’t develop if you’re being cared for properly.”

This was putting it mildly. A pressure sore – also known as a bedsore – occurs when continuous pressure on a part of the body means blood flow is restricted to the area and the skin starts to break down as a result.

With proper mattresses and regular turning, there is no need for them to develop. Mrs Millward is in her seventies, has severe, debilitating rheumatoid arthritis, and as a result is bedbound and reliant on the staff at the nursing home where she lives. Her hands are so crippled that she can only just hold the TV remote and change the channel. She certainly can’t turn herself.

Since my first encounter with bedsores, I have come across them many times when working with older people or those with debilitating conditions which mean they are reliant on others for their personal care.

Each time I see one, it makes me sick, not because of how they look and smell but because of the gross negligence they represent on the part of those charged with caring for the people they affect.

It is estimated that bedsores affect nearly half a million people each year, while the latest figures show that pressure ulcers – which leave patients susceptible to potentially deadly infection – resulted in 4,708 deaths between 2003 and 2008. Almost 1,000 people a year die from a condition that is entirely preventable – nearly as many people who die from MRSA.

Yet while MRSA attracts national campaigns and political intervention, bedsores go largely ignored. There are no posters in hospitals about them, no leaflets handed out as there are with hospital-acquired infections.

Nurses don’t wear badges encouraging us to ask them if they’ve turned a patient in the same way they wear badges telling us it’s OK to ask if they’ve washed their hands. Why? I suspect it is because bedsores affect the weakest members of society: the old, infirm and disabled.

These groups of people have few advocates. They are shut off from the world in institutions, and as a result their plight often goes unheard. Treating those who develop pressure sores uses four per cent of the entire NHS budget, but the real cost is in the needless human suffering they bring.

Last week, the shameful issue was finally brought into the open with the publication of a hospital league table detailing the worst offenders. The list, drawn up by the NHS standards watchdog Dr Foster, found that a third of the 150 hospitals surveyed had bedsore rates higher than the national average.

But why just name and shame them? Why resort to an abstract, bureaucratic solution to a very real human suffering? I think we should go further. NHS bosses and the Department of Health should adopt a zero tolerance policy for bedsores.

Given that with proper nursing and medical care they are preventable, in every case, it should be viewed as a case of professional negligence. The managers responsible for the ward or nursing home should face disciplinary procedures and if someone dies, instant dismissal. When faced with this kind of threat, I suspect that very quickly, the problem would start to improve.

Even more worryingly, there are no official figures for bedsores in care home residents, yet in every patient I have seen with them, this is where they have developed. Severe financial penalties might force owners of these homes to invest in ensuring they never occur.

I understand that the proliferation of paperwork in the NHS has meant that trained staff often spend longer filling out forms than they do caring for patients. I know that this frustrates and angers many in the profession.

I also understand that as a result the day-to-day care of patients in hospitals and residents in nursing homes is often left to poorly trained and poorly paid staff. That might be the reason, but it is not an excuse.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8626750/Bedsores-the-treatable-killer.html