Posted on 10 December 2010

Patients Association report includes “humiliating” experience in Leeds hospital

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A Patients Association report into substandard care for the elderly has included the story of an 80-year-old woman’s poor experiences at two Leeds hospitals.

Jean Kellard, who lives in Devon, was visiting her daughter Carole Brown in Leeds last November. She was taken ill with double pneumonia and admitted to Leeds General Infirmary before being transferred to St James’s Hospital in the city.

During her stay at LGI she was made to wait hours for an x-ray and suffered several bruises on her left arm as staff tried to insert a drip. At St James’s Hospital Mrs Brown said that her mother had been taken to the toilet and left there, on one occasion she was there for half an hour, pulling on a buzzer that didn’t work.

On another occasion, whilst in bed, she began coughing and pressed the buzzer for staff but nobody came. Mrs Brown said: “Unfortunately the coughing made her wet the bed. When someone finally arrived she was dumped on the commode very ungraciously and the nurse tutted and muttered all the time she had to change the bed.” Mrs Brown contacted the Patients Association and the treatment her mother received was mentioned in the association’s recent report into elderly care.

The chief nurse at Leeds teaching Hospitals, Ruth Holt said that the trust acknowledged that care and communication were not up to standard and that they had apologised to Mrs Kellard’s family. She added that the trust had offered to meet Mrs Brown on a number of occasions and that the offer still remains if it would help resolve her concerns.