Category Archives: hospital

Dementia: how our campaign for patient dignity in hospitals took off

When I wrote about my father’s death, it touched many readers, all passionate to help dementia sufferers

‘Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Over the past few weeks, I have become freshly aware of the wisdom of this saying, aware both of this great battle we fight and of the kindness of people that runs like an underground river beneath the noise and hurtle of public events.

Two months ago, I wrote a piece in the Observer about the death of my father, who had had dementia for many years, but had been leading a contented life at home until he went into hospital with leg ulcers. I described how he entered able to walk, talk, wash himself, feed himself, work in his beloved garden, listen to poetry, be happy – and how, five weeks later, he came out a skeleton, incontinent, immobile, inarticulate, bed-bound. He lived like a ghost in his own life for eight more months; his dying was both a great sorrow but also his release.

‘Take care complaints more seriously’ regulator says

Complaints about health and social care should be taken more seriously, says the Care Quality Commission regulator.

Its report said there was a wide variation in the way complaints were handled across the NHS, primary care and adult social care services in England.

Too often people were met with a “defensive culture”, the report said.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has welcomed the move to improve care and said progress had been made.

Suffolk: Red Cross to care for discharged hospital patients in their homes

Plans for post discharge patient care revealed

Thursday, September 25, 2014
8:45 AM

Hospital patients in Ipswich and east Suffolk could soon be cared for in their homes by the Red Cross after being discharged.

Plans will be discussed later this month to send Red Cross staff to the homes of patients in the three days following a hospital stay.

The move is designed to provide post discharge support to patients for 72 hours and is one of several direct services to be contracted to the third sector in an effort to curb unnecessarily long hospital stays.