Totally wrecked, utterly disgusted!!

Disgusting! Disgusting! Disgusting!

That's the exact word that echoed throughout the hospital last night.

I admitted a 76 year old lady from a nursing home. Not the ordinary nursing home, but a supposedly HIGH DEPENDENCY nursing home. One which was meant to be providing high level of nursing care 24/7. Very much like spending one's life in an Intensive Care Unit in the community. Mrs S is known to have Progressive Suprenuclear Palsy (PSP), a condition which mimics Parkinson's disease.

A quick glance at her, I knew she had been neglected by her NH. In a very bad way. She was unkempt. She was wearing a dirty food-stained nighties. A few abrasions were evident in her face, some of which were infected and oozing pus. On further examination she had a huge pressure sore in her sacral area. She was also struggling for her breaths. She was severely dehydrated.

Worse still, when one of my nursing staffs catheterised her, pus...I repeat..PUS was drained directly out from her bladder!! Another nurse described it as bad mustard-coloured. More yucky discharge was found dripping out from her genitalia.

As she was non-communicative as a result of the PSP, I decided to phone the NH to obtain more background stories.

1. Mrs S had several falls in the last few days. On one occasion she became drowsy after a fall. (For those who are not familiar with medicine, drowsiness/confusion/coma after a fall often suggests severe head trauma, which includes an intracranial haemorrhage. A medical opinion is mandatory under these circumstances) The staff at the NH however thought the doctor should not be called out to examine the patient.

2. Due to the nature of her PSP, Mrs S had difficulty swallowing. This makes her highly at risk of developing an aspiration pneumonia (ie chest infection due to vomitus getting into the lungs). Those idiots in the NH failed to acknowledge this, and kept on feeding her in the usual manner. And now she came in because of just that.

3. One of the most basic nursing skills is to turn bed-bound patients regularly in order to prevent pressure sore. No half-decent nurse would ignore this simple but important task. But guess what? Those idiots again failed to carry out their duties. Mrs S's sacral sore was like a volcano crater. If that's not bad enough, the staff whom I spoke to over the phone claimed she wasn't aware of her sore!! I decided I won't even bother asking her about Mrs S's bladder and vaginal discharges.

My wife and I come from a third world country. Whenever we discuss about United Kingdom we never fail to admire British civilisation. "How advanced these people are!" "How did they manage to build such a sophiscated castle in the 12th century?" Bla bla bla....In short, we have very high regards for the Brits and their civilisation.

This unfortunate encounter with Mrs S made me rethink my opinion about this supposedly developed, industrialised superpower of the world. A country which at one time colonised 1/3 of the world. How could these people from the NH do such things to a vulnerable old lady?? I'm starting to lose faith.