"My late wife"

My late wife was admitted to Ayr hospital after numerous outpatient tests failed to find what was causing her health problems.

She contracted flu, C-Dif and was understandably placed in isolation in a room where the window could not be opened. That meant she had little or no contact with the nursing staff apart from routine observations. At no time was I prevented from visiting, implying that the potential risks to others was manageable.

As her time in hospital lengthened, it seemed the staff were more concerned about filling in tick box sheets than patient care. On several occasions I visited, the call button was in a drawer beside her bed, on the floor or otherwise unreachable. The inflatable plastic leg splints were in opposite corners of the room and her Zimmer was often out of reach. She was in considerable mental distress, yet I observed the tick box sheets and noted that all the boxes were ticked to indicate that all was in order. Sadly, I cannot tie my observations to specific dates and hence to the tick boxes for that date. She constantly complained that when she was able to use the call button, the response was at best slow if at all. I also noted that on several visits the audible alert to the call button had been silenced.

Sadly, as a result of these responses she found it necessary to visit the toilet unaccompanied. On one of those occasions she overbalanced and fell, resulting in a broken hip. There was to be an inquiry into that, but I don't know if it ever happened. She was transferred to Crosshouse hospital where the hip was successfully operated on. Sadly, the tick box culture prevailed and even when an underlying cancer diagnosis was found, the intended treatment was delayed for tests before she could be transferred to the correct department. She had been in hospital for 6 weeks; any infections should have been detected and anything detected would have had its source in hospital anyway. Sadly, she died before any treatment for the cancer could begin.

I am not suggesting that the eventual outcome would have been different.

The nursing and medical staff are doing their best, but it would appear that they are hampered by the overwhelming risk assessment and blame avoidance culture that seems to exist within the NHS.