Apology After Five Week Stay in Scarborough Hospital Impacts Patient's Independence

A woman has shared the story of her father’s five-week “odyssey” at Scarborough Hospital which she says has left him unable to take care of himself following a series of “distressing” moves and mistakes.

The York and Scarborough NHS Trust’s Board has apologised “sincerely” to a woman whose father went from being “independent” to “considering for a care home” following a five-week stay in Scarborough Hospital.

Speaking at a board meeting of the York and Scarborough NHS Trust on Wednesday September 28, Mrs Karen Banks recounted how upon being admitted to Scarborough A&E in July, her father, 88-year-old Mr Angus Taylor, was put into monitoring but fell off a trolley and suffered a “catastrophic fall”.

She also described the “unacceptable” moving of her father between wards, sometimes late at night.

She said:

“He had eight moves in five weeks and I prevented the ninth move. Two of the moves involved him being woken up at half twelve or midnight, taken out of bed and placed into a wheelchair and moved to another part of the hospital.

“My father found these moves extremely, extremely distressing. He said to me at one point ‘I am not going to sleep tonight, Karen, because I am so scared of where I am going to end up tomorrow’ and that ‘I cannot cope anymore with these moves’.

“And for my father, who is 88 years old, to say that to me. He found them so disorientating, I can’t describe it.”

At the meeting, members of the board apologised for what had occurred during Mr Taylor’s stay at Scarborough Hospital.

One member of the board said:

“I think regarding the ward moves, we are under pressure, though that’s not an excuse.”

She added:

“We don’t always look at how many moves [patients] have previously had. So we are doing some work looking at having a senior matron on site 24 hours a day, who can manage the patient flow and hopefully that will really help.”

Meanwhile, the chair of the board, Mr Alan Downey, expressed a

“sincere apology on behalf of all the nurses and on behalf of the board and the Trust”

and said that lessons would be learned.

Mrs Banks also described how the various moves delayed her father’s discharge from the hospital.

She said:

“The move to Aspen [Ward], which was the most distressing, caused dad’s lymph node biopsy to be postponed because radiology would not accept a patient from a Covid ward even though it was day 10 [after he tested positive].

“So that delayed the lymph node biopsy which delayed the diagnosis which delayed the discharge.”

The board also discussed a report by the Trust’s head of compliance & clinical effectiveness, Shaun McKenna, which addressed an earlier report by the Care Quality Commission.

It stated that the healthcare regulator had been dealing with an increasing number of enquiries and monitoring requests which could lead to an inspection.

The report added:

“Continued whistleblowing and enquiries do not instil confidence with the external regulator and may instigate a wider inspection, such as well-led. The executive committee is asked to note the impending unannounced inspection.”

Mrs Banks also described a situation where she says lack of communication led her to believe that her father had died following an operation.

She said:

“After dad’s operation I was told to phone Holly Ward where he was. I asked if dad had come through the operation and they didn’t know where he was.

“I thought he had died and they just weren’t telling me. That’s how stressful and distressing it was. They said ‘we think he’s on Maple [Ward], do you want to give them a ring?’.

“So I called them and there he was. He also thought he’d died because he’d come round in a darkened room with no sound. He said ‘Oh, Karen, I thought I’d died’ and I said ‘so did I’. That was Maple Ward.”

She said:

“Dad’s really gone from somebody who wanted to live to 100 to someone who says ‘go and push me off a cliff’. So that is the situation we are in.”

Mrs Banks also said that her and her father’s mental health had suffered as a result of the ordeal:

“I have become dad’s carer now and this is for someone who was completely mobile and did everything himself.

“And ten weeks after a stay in Scarborough Hospital we’ve gone to someone who is considering a care home because I can’t cope and he can’t cope.”

The chair of the board, Alan Downey, said:

“Thank you so much. I think you have said a great deal already and they are hard words to hear and they have really hit home. And I would like to thank you for coming along and presenting your father’s story so clearly.

“And I’d also like to offer a sincere apology on behalf of all the nurses and on behalf of the board and the Trust for the experience that your father has gone through and the experience that you have gone through with him.”

Mr Downey added:

“The really important thing with all these patient stories is of course to listen to them and address the specific points that you raise, but also to work out how we can avoid this happening to other patients in the future.”

According to Mrs Banks, there is currently a “duty of care investigation ongoing”.