Elderly patients are being 'treated like animals' and left to lie in their own ... trends now
Hospitals are treating the elderly 'like animals', according to a shock investigation.
Patients in their 80s and 90s have allegedly been left without pain relief, unable to wash and stuck in soiled sheets on overwhelmed NHS wards.
In one of the most harrowing examples, a 96-year-old man admitted to the hospital with a UTI was allegedly left delirious in his hospital bed — before choking on vomit after being sedated without his family's permission.
Meanwhile, a 99-year-old woman was left traumatised after being abandoned in a bed next to the body of a dead woman.
One doctor told The Independent, which carried out the probe, that 'undignified' treatment was 'symptomatic of a health service stretched to its limits'.
In one case, Thomas Giles (pictured), 96, was allegedly left 'exposed to all passers-by, ill, semi-naked, distressed, delirious and neglected in care' during his two-month stay at Whiston Hospital in Lancashire. According to his daughter, Dr Alison Giles, he initially spent eight hours in a hospital corridor before being moved to the ward for frail elderly people. He was suffering 'delirium' due to a UTI
In another case, 99-year-old Kathleen Hoddell (pictured) attended A&E at Queens Hospital Burton in Derbyshire in early 2022 for fractures in her spine, weeks after she was allegedly sent home with just two paracetamols. The following morning, her daughter Sally Ann Newstead, claimed she found her mother without any pain medication, no staff on the ward and forced to sit next to a dead woman
Experts fear the situation is only going to get worse, with rising numbers of patients suffering long delays or forced to sit on trolleys in hospital corridors as they wait for a bed.
The government was warned three times last year by coroners of the risk to elderly patients in hospital, The Independent reported.
In one Prevention of Future Deaths report, a coroner said there was an urgent need for more doctors to specialise in elderly care.
Another warned delayed discharges — so-called 'bed blockers, when patients are declared fit by doctors but not discharged — were putting the elderly at greater risk.
The newspaper also found over half of the 1.5million patients who were left waiting more than 12 hours to be seen in A&E last year in England were aged 70 and over.
Dr John Dean, clinical vice-president at the Royal College of Physicians, said the situation was 'heartbreaking'.
He added: 'Cases such as these are unacceptable and are sadly symptomatic of a health service stretched to its limits.'
Meanwhile, Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said the care of older people was 'undignified'.
Dr Vicky Price, president-elect of the Society for Acute Medicine, added: 'Older patients are increasingly receiving care well below the standards they should expect and that staff wish to provide but cannot due to the intense pressures.
'This includes being subject to long waits in waiting rooms and degrading corridor care which is regrettably becoming widespread and increases the likelihood of adverse outcomes for this patient group.'
In one case, Thomas Giles, 96, was allegedly left 'exposed to all passers-by, ill, semi-naked, distressed, delirious and neglected in care' during his two-month stay at Whiston Hospital in Lancashire.
According to his daughter, Dr Alison Giles, he initially spent eight hours in a hospital corridor before being moved to the ward for frail elderly people. He was suffering 'delirium' due to a UTI.
Over the course of a week, she also claimed he was sedated without his family's permission, which saw him choking on his own vomit, and was left
