Investigation launched over mortality rates at Colchester General Hospital and Essex County Hospital (From Clacton and Frinton Gazette)

Of the 5 mentioned Colchester seems to be in a group of 3 with worse problems:

https://catalogue.ic
.nhs.uk/publications
/hospital/outcomes/s
hmi-deat-hosp-eng-ju
l-11-jun-12-exp-stat
/shmi-deat-hosp-eng-
jul-11-jun-12-exp-st
at-supp-rep.pdf

No doubt we can expect a few early retirements followed by "lessons will be learnt".

This is nothing new. Mortality rates have been high for years. I must say I've never had anything but the best treatment when I've been there.

It is very rare that I add anything to an online forum, but felt the need to add my experiences of the service provided by the Colchester General Hospital and Essex County Hospital over the years.

It is with regret that I have nothing but bad things to say about the service provided by this hospital.

From the experiences of my wife witnessing an old women being ignored even though blind and thirsty and the other patients having to help the woman, to the treatment of my father who sadly ended up dying, I can well believe the allegations that the hospital is now facing.

I will only relay the experiences I had with my father going into hospital for a broken hip. Having been moved to a bed in a ward which was ‘closer to the exit door’ and seemingly been on the road to recovery and expecting him to be discharged, he took an unexpected turn for the worst and his health deteriorated within a matter of hours.

Luckily or unluckily depending how you look at it I was there for his final hours and could witness the events.

From the start he was drugged up to the eyeballs which rendered him incoherent and there were days where he didn’t recognise family members, whether this is correct procedure I can only take the staffs word for it, but the dosage he was subjected to meant that the time he lay still in bed did seem excessive.

Apparently with a broken hip and a person of his age it appeared that it was imperative that he should have been instructed to move around and helped to do so in order to stop clots which could be fatal should they occur. This sadly ended up being his fate.

The family during the regular visits were the only people who were ensuring he was getting the fluids he required as it appeared that the majority of the nurses were quite happy to congregate around the desk.

Having visited him in the afternoon around 2.30 and just missing my sister who had been to see him only minutes ago he seemed tired, which again I put down to the drugs, so I stayed with him having the odd chat and within the next hour or so he was dozing off. I decided to leave and returned to my car, then realising I had left my phone by his bedside I returned to collect it off the table.

On my return, and the time that had elapsed could have only been 10 minutes, he had deteriorated. I sat with him a while and highlighted his worsening condition to the nurse. To this she replied he was alright ‘half an hour ago’.

Well as I had been there for the past two hours and not seen one nurse converse with him in my time there this was a blatant lie that she had any idea on the condition of my father at that particular time.

The pain he was suffering was worsening and I was extremely worried by now as it was evident the pain he was suffering was inscrutable and at this point he mentioned he just 'wanted to die'. Over the next hour or so a Doctor was summoned and my father was looked at but by this time he was unconscious.

The look of shock on the Doctors face said it all, because as I did I think he realised something had gone seriously wrong somewhere.

My father continued to deteriorate and ended up having a heart attack bought on by a haemorrhage and this finally killed him. From conversing with my sister to me seeing him dead in the bed took six hours.

He was getting on but the neglect of care that he was subjected to, I believe, killed him. Had I not witnessed the whole process from him being omitted to hospital for the broken hip (and this was only done so by the second team of paramedics who had assessed him following the misdiagnosis of the first team who had arrived four hours previously who said that he had just bruised his hip) to him taking his final breath, the treatment he received was shocking.

There will be no end of tales to come out of this ‘general enquiry’ and each one will be as shocking as the last.

Everyone down the line and working at the Hospital has to take some responsibility for the lack of professionalism and simply the lack of care that is shown to the patients who enter that Hospital.

The enquiry will unveil shocking neglect by certain staff and we will be told how hard they are working to change the procedures that are currently in place. This is no good to the older people who have had the misfortune to have entered that hospital expecting decent treatment and been handed over to a Trust which inadvertently appears to run a euthanasia clinic.

I pity any old person who has to go into that Hospital, something which I shouldn’t have to be saying in the 21st century in a supposedly modern and civilised country.

Whilst NHS Trusts continue to get financial incentives to put old people on the Liverpool Care Pathway, by withdrawing care, water, etc and helping to speed up death, mortality rates will continue to be high.

It would be interesting to know how much of a bonus Colchester has received for using this LCP method to free up beds.

NJ 2012......I can relate positively to your observations regarding Colchester General Hospital. I too have had a recent horrendous experience regarding a close elderly relation.

Almost all the points of neglect you mention, are precisely the same as I have witnesed,

Younger patients who can help themselves, and most importantly can speak up for themselves, will always say how well they were treated, and this is fine.

But It's a different story for the older and more infirm patients, one gets the impression that some nursing staff and their supervisors treat old people with complete indifference.

A major investigation is long overdue
at Colchester General Hospital..

I believe that the lowering of nursing standards began with the introduction of the nursing station.this seemed to provide an area more for general meeting for chats among staff.affording them somewhere to lounge rather than spend time with patients especially the elderly.

Lets hope any investigation starts at the top in particular the Board and works its way down the layers of management and not just looks at the clinical staff.
Colchester Hospital is not a nice place to work. It would be interesting to know the figures of how many people in the same departments are related and how many graduates in the summer have a parent who works there already. Until they address this and the tremendous amount of money wasted in temp contracts through agencies which could be used to employ further nurses then there will always be a problem.

My impression the last time I had to go (as a visitor) was that the nurses were short-staffed to breaking point. As nora says above, if you could talk and get their attention, you would get sorted. But there were quite a few very elderly and pretty ill people there, and beeps and lights would be going for a long time before anybody came.

There are layers and layers of management in the NHS, and I think many of those layers would hardly even know where the wards are. Their time is spent starting "initiatives" which normally involve the collection of data and the completion of reports and forms. they do this because they feel they have to be seen to "do something". Those layers take home nice big salaries while the nursing staff face an uphill struggle to keep up.

The horror and fear and pain suffered by many of the elderly in hospital has to be addressed. All of us face this nightmare, some are fortunate and are "Sister's Little Pets", the rest get ignored, mistreated, and for good measure the nursing staff and even medical staff join ranks and lie through their teeth after the event.
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Just pray that if you go in and are over 50, you have the good fortune to be attended in the main by some of the "old school" of more mature nurses - those who do not say when faced with a problem "Oh, I'll get someone to see to it" and then do nothing. Nurses doing actual nursing as we understand it? Forget that.
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As I have stated on previous threads, my own experience has not been of Colchester's hospitals, but it does seem that the same rotten strand runs throughout most of the NHS hospitals.
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Let's have an example of "caring": not so long ago a friend was lying in hospital recovering from back surgery. She called out to a nearby nurse that she was going to vomit, and needed help (obviously in that position there was a danger of choking). The nurse replied "I don't DO sick!!!", placed a bowl by the side of the patient's face, and ran for the corridor.
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If I had been paid for the many hours I spent attending patients other than my spouse during a long hospital stay, I would be a millionaire! I am glad to help those who have few or no visitors, to chat for a while and to bring some comforts. It is very noticeable that these patients are also the most ignored by the nursing staff. After all, if harm befalls them who is going to come at the Hospital with a claim? How sad that even the auxiliaries would rather talk to each other about their sad sex lives and discos than go and do the work they are paid for, caring for those who can't help themselves. They might often find a very interesting and charming person to befriend.
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As one note of hope and maybe comfort, the dreaded Nursing Stations are under process of elimination in at least one NHS hospital. Bravo to the senior nursing officer responsible! We all hate and dread the Glass Wall that seems to be around such Stations, when one can stand for a very long time waiting to speak to Nurse or Doctor, only to be ignored or brushed away. I do often wonder if those phone calls on which they are fixed, are really calls at all, or whether they put the earpieces to their heads to cut themselves off from those they should be assisting?
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These days, when one is in, or visits, a ward where care is good and procedure exemplary, one feels unduly grateful and amazed. Years ago a patient entering hospital would be relieved and grateful that they were going to be looked after in a clean and warm environment, to the best of everyone's ability, be treated with respect and great care, and that they would almost inevitably be home after a week or so in much better shape. Not so now.

On the ward my father was on it didn't seem to be a shortage of nurses that was the problem and although not knowing what goes on behind the scenes on the wards there seemed to be enough nurses wondering around during the visits.

But as mentioned above it seems like its the work ethic that is missing as why should they wait to be told or asked to assist someone, or is it now the norm for them to stand around chatting and wait to be asked to carry out their duty rather than conduct it as a matter of course?

We all know its a hard job but they know this when they enter that profession but something has to be done. The teirs within the NHS have to be reduced to make people accountable and this accountability has to be for everyone including those people working within the wards.

Why should they be exempt from criticism if they are to blame for failings during the treatment of someone in their care, but whistle blowing within this profession is something that is very rare.

NJ2012 wrote:
It is very rare that I add anything to an online forum, but felt the need to add my experiences of the service provided by the Colchester General Hospital and Essex County Hospital over the years.

It is with regret that I have nothing but bad things to say about the service provided by this hospital.

From the experiences of my wife witnessing an old women being ignored even though blind and thirsty and the other patients having to help the woman, to the treatment of my father who sadly ended up dying, I can well believe the allegations that the hospital is now facing.

I will only relay the experiences I had with my father going into hospital for a broken hip. Having been moved to a bed in a ward which was ‘closer to the exit door’ and seemingly been on the road to recovery and expecting him to be discharged, he took an unexpected turn for the worst and his health deteriorated within a matter of hours.

Luckily or unluckily depending how you look at it I was there for his final hours and could witness the events.

From the start he was drugged up to the eyeballs which rendered him incoherent and there were days where he didn’t recognise family members, whether this is correct procedure I can only take the staffs word for it, but the dosage he was subjected to meant that the time he lay still in bed did seem excessive.

Apparently with a broken hip and a person of his age it appeared that it was imperative that he should have been instructed to move around and helped to do so in order to stop clots which could be fatal should they occur. This sadly ended up being his fate.

The family during the regular visits were the only people who were ensuring he was getting the fluids he required as it appeared that the majority of the nurses were quite happy to congregate around the desk.

Having visited him in the afternoon around 2.30 and just missing my sister who had been to see him only minutes ago he seemed tired, which again I put down to the drugs, so I stayed with him having the odd chat and within the next hour or so he was dozing off. I decided to leave and returned to my car, then realising I had left my phone by his bedside I returned to collect it off the table.

On my return, and the time that had elapsed could have only been 10 minutes, he had deteriorated. I sat with him a while and highlighted his worsening condition to the nurse. To this she replied he was alright ‘half an hour ago’.

Well as I had been there for the past two hours and not seen one nurse converse with him in my time there this was a blatant lie that she had any idea on the condition of my father at that particular time.

The pain he was suffering was worsening and I was extremely worried by now as it was evident the pain he was suffering was inscrutable and at this point he mentioned he just 'wanted to die'. Over the next hour or so a Doctor was summoned and my father was looked at but by this time he was unconscious.

The look of shock on the Doctors face said it all, because as I did I think he realised something had gone seriously wrong somewhere.

My father continued to deteriorate and ended up having a heart attack bought on by a haemorrhage and this finally killed him. From conversing with my sister to me seeing him dead in the bed took six hours.

He was getting on but the neglect of care that he was subjected to, I believe, killed him. Had I not witnessed the whole process from him being omitted to hospital for the broken hip (and this was only done so by the second team of paramedics who had assessed him following the misdiagnosis of the first team who had arrived four hours previously who said that he had just bruised his hip) to him taking his final breath, the treatment he received was shocking.

There will be no end of tales to come out of this ‘general enquiry’ and each one will be as shocking as the last.

Everyone down the line and working at the Hospital has to take some responsibility for the lack of professionalism and simply the lack of care that is shown to the patients who enter that Hospital.

The enquiry will unveil shocking neglect by certain staff and we will be told how hard they are working to change the procedures that are currently in place. This is no good to the older people who have had the misfortune to have entered that hospital expecting decent treatment and been handed over to a Trust which inadvertently appears to run a euthanasia clinic.

I pity any old person who has to go into that Hospital, something which I shouldn’t have to be saying in the 21st century in a supposedly modern and civilised country.

Both my Uncle and my Aunt have been treated quite shambolically at this Trust or Untrust as I call it.
My cousins have taken complaints to the highest echelons of authority in London only to be told, that they have to action Judicial Reviews against the institution.
There are some that do work very hard Consultants and Nursing Staff alike.
The vast majority do not.
Out will come the carrot crunching Nanny Brigade who will state I had a lovely time in their and they treated me like a Queen!!!!
My uncle was left in a corridor on one occasion and left to excrete in his own three piece suite.
When it was handed to my cousins the suit was covered in the stuff from head to toe.
The old chap had about 5 admissions in there in 7 years between the ages of 63 to 74. It was a disgrace and a shambles most of the time.
There was never an occasion when something did not go wrong or a complaint had to be made.
My Auntie had a Hip Operation in there, when she was discharged she said there was something wrong, they ignored her, she caught an infection, which led to a stroke, then she was paralysed, nice retirement present for her from the hospital at 67 years old.
This place is a massive elephant of grand blanc. It needs to be made smaller and we must go back to cottage treatment specialist sites like Essex County.
It has become to Corporate.
The waiting list times are awful.
They break the rules on the 18 weeks wait times, by using ruses that would be the envy of Arthur Daily:
The Chief Exec Must resign in the wake of this report.
The replacement was no better than the last post holder who fell on the same blade.
The corporate quiffy hair style and smiley face, no longer fools anyone.
People are dying here and the more questions need to be asked WHY?
Its our money at the end of the day.
As for P.A.L.S. They are a rhetoric white washing service, that needs to be shut down with other quangoes in there.
For +God Sake's+ and the state of all of us please let us get rid of these recalsitrant idiots that are running this needy service. PLEASE no more suffering++++
YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE NOW RESIGN AND LEAVE US BE GO DO YOUR THING SOMEWHERE ELSE:

Thoroughly agree about PALS. They sometimes say something that approximates to "sorry you didn't like the way we treated you / your relative", which is not an apology but just means "you didn't like it but we don't admit it's wrong".
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Otherwise, they go out of their way to put the complainant in the wrong or to make them look foolish, backed up by the closed ranks of the various "professions" they represent.

There is a site which records opinion on peoples experiences at Colchester General Hospital and does appear to be read by staff members at the trust. If you have an issue,it may be worth posting it on there,be it good,bad or indifferent. https://www.patiento
pinion.org.uk/servic
es/rde

Thank you, emmalv, but apart from those who are choosing a hospital for forthcoming procedures (and you can choose these days from those in the area), who is going to read these appraisals? They do take a long time to pore through.
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Do you think the hospital takes any notice, apart from the occasional on-line reply of "thank you for drawing this to our attention" and "we are so sorry you felt this was not good enough although we think it is!".
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It's just another bottomless pit, although I do admit it is open to the public to view. It's another bit of lip-service like PALS to make the naive believe that "something will be done" and to keep them off the backs of the offending staf.

wellnow wrote:
I believe that the lowering of nursing standards began with the introduction of the nursing station.this seemed to provide an area more for general meeting for chats among staff.affording them somewhere to lounge rather than spend time with patients especially the elderly.

Could you elaborate when you have witnessed this? From what I have seen myself and from what i have been told by friends in the profession the general view is nurses are short staffed and over worked - it is normal for them to work through breaks to care for patients - hardly lounging around and chatting in a general meeting area.

The NHS is close to imploding through underinvestment, an ever expanding population and a huge management wage - quite easy to sort out at least one of those problems.

Having first hand experience too of this disgusting hell hole that is meant to be a caring place for sick people its about time something was done. We went to the press last year with our complaint and near death experience on this same ward Wivenhoe. We suffered terribly mainly due to discrimination because of having mental health issues and scars from self harming. I was told "You don't deserve to be helped there are better more important people in need". They almost killed me twice!!! The neglect we saw was heart breaking beyond words. An elderly lady opposite us was incontinent and needed help many times through the day but when evening came her calls for help were ignored by staff. Eventually after several hours a disgruntled nurse came and gave the elderly lady an enema and then put a pad underneath her and walked away. Before long the lady was calling for help as the enema had worked and she needed the toilet. She was ignored for hours! The poor lady was crying in anguish and the smell was apparent from our bed she was in no doubt in a mess. Despite our agony of pain we went over to her and tried to comfort her the best we could. She kept crying out please just let me die. Enough was enough and we made the nurse come. We sure paid the price for it but the lady got the much needed help she needed. We were disgusted at her treatment and that of others. They showed no empathy or compassion and everything was an effort. There was no shortage of staff they were too busy gossiping about patients at the nurses station. If they don't like the job don't do it. Don't cause unnecessary suffering to helpless sick people they are looking and trusting in them to help them recover from whatever ills they have. My mother was admitted and her treatment was appalling . Her bed had blood on it from the previous patient and the sheets were far from clean. Would these so called nurses treat a member of their own family this way no they wouldn't!! We did however get moved to another ward after much agony and being on the point of no longer wanting to live to Mersea Ward and the contrast was amazing. The staff were fantastic. The ward was spotless and the compassion and empathy they showed was touching to say the least. They made us feel cared for not a burden. So why is wivenhoe and brightlingsea so opposite? Get shot of all the staff in these two wards they are not nurses they are incompetent morons that care nothing for others only gossip and their pay check! We are in the process of suing them and PALS were bloody useless and waste of space so we are taken action ourselves and we won't quit until those nurses are brought to justice.

I visited a family member a few years back, as I was making my way to the ward I saw in the corridor a young lady cleaning the floor. As I sat chatting away to my family member the same girl in the same dirty clothes appeared with the refreshment trolley, I guess they were making cut backs to employ extra staff. I don't know if this is still happening, luckily have not had to go back for any reason.

To request on here for evidence of lingering round the nursing station rather than spending time with the charges under their care.i say this just visit and look.