The Patients Association is demanding an urgent review of basic hospital care because there is “a consistent pattern of shocking standards of care”.
It says its Helpline receives calls daily from relatives of patients, who are often elderly, and have been left to lie in their own faeces or urine and not helped to eat by nursing staff.
Today it published a report Patients Not Numbers, People Not Statistics highlighting 16 accounts of such appalling care.
It wants to see stricter supervision and regulation of hospital care and is calling on the government and the Care Quality Commission to conduct an urgent review of the standards of basic care.
Director of the Patients Association Katherine Murphy said the accounts in the report tell the story of the two per cent of patients that consistently rate their care as poor.
“If this was extrapolated to the whole of the NHS from 2002 to 2008 it would equate to over 1 million patients. Very often these are the most vulnerable elderly and terminally ill patients - it’s a sad indictment of the care they receive,” she said.
“These accounts reveal patients being denied basic dignity in their care-often left in soiled bed clothes, being given inadequate food and drink, having repeated falls, suffering from late diagnosis, cancelled operations, bungled referrals and misplaced notes. There are also worrying instances of cruel and callous attitudes from staff towards vulnerable and sometimes terminally ill patients.”
President of the Patients Association and former nurse Claire Rayner said: “For far too long now, the Patients Association has been receiving calls on our Helpline from people wanting to talk about the dreadful, neglectful, demeaning, painful and sometimes downright cruel treatment their elderly relatives had experienced at the hands of NHS nurses.”
“I am sickened by what has happened to some part of my profession of which I was so proud. These bad, cruel nurses may be - probably are - a tiny proportion of the nursing work force, but even if they are only one or two percent of the whole they should be identified and struck off the Register.”
RCN Chief Executive Dr Peter Carter said: “The level of care described by these families is completely unacceptable, and we will not condone nurses who behave in ways that are contrary to the principles and ethics of the profession. However we believe that the vast majority of nurses are decent, highly skilled individuals. This is reflected in the fact that last survey of patients by the Care Quality Commission found that over 90 per cent rated the care they received as good, very good or excellent.
“Patients and families who feel that care is substandard must raise concerns as near as possible to the time of the incidents in order to allow for proper investigation.”