My 97 year-old father, who was suffering from an infection, was taken to the hospital last week. A seven-hour wait in A&E resulted in not only a diagnosis of suspected septicaemia but also — thanks to a routine test carried out as part of the doctors’ investigations — Covid.
Even though he had very few coronavirus symptoms I was forced to explain what that meant to him. An NHS Covid Ward is the only place that allows isolation.
No visits. ‘Righty-oh,’ he said cheerfully. My father always sees the positive side. The news finally hit and there was silence. ‘It’s a bastard, isn’t it.’ My father never swears.
I’m embarrassed to say that I cried. An illustrious nine-month stint in five hospitals was my first experience with staff shadowing and interviewing patients. This report is based on a think tank about the management of the NHS.
I met inspiring individuals. I was also a witness to indifferent nurses and hospital-acquired infections.
My father had me afraid. A dear friend died in hospital fifteen years ago. I remember spending three nights at his side, because I was so worried about what I’d seen during my research.
Harriet Sargeant, Harriet’s daughter, shared how her father (an ex-City Editor of the Daily Mail) was nearly killed by the NHS. Pictured: Sir Patrick and daughter Harriet
That would have been impossible for me on a Covid Ward. As my friend was being neglected by the nurses, I could imagine my dad crying in pain. The thought was unbearable.
But I was not there to assist. Communication was essential. My dad has no idea of how the mobile functions.
You don’t even need to keep it charged. In the brief time before he vanished into isolation in the hospital near my parents’ London home, we snatched what we both feared were final exchanges.
‘Keep smiling!’ my father urged, summing up his attitude to life. ‘Enjoy yourself and support Ga Ga,’ (my mother, aged 95, to whom he has been married for 70 years). ‘And keep your pecker up,’ he added when I started to sniff.
My father called me after a long, sleepless night. My father woke up in the morning and his phone rang. I held my breath.
But it was charged. I got no answer. I tried again. Suddenly my father burst on to the line, ‘Harriet!’ he boomed. ‘How good to hear a human voice,’ he added, with the desperation of a drowning man.
He was unable to comprehend the nurses’ instructions and was starving. ‘I am looking at a bit of white toast.’ He was also missing the usual bottle of champagne he still consumes every day. ‘Even in the war you got a drink!’
Sir Patrick Sergeant was my father, the former City Editor for the Daily Mail. He is also the founder of Euromoney magazine.
He reinvented financial journalism, determined to make it of interest to the ordinary reader, and was behind the 1966 launch of Money Mail, the Mail’s peerless financial section.
Harriet claimed that her father had developed bedores, and she complained of feeling hungry because of the insufficient care at hospital. Pictured with Sir Patrick and Harriet, Harriet’s four-year old daughter.
He was stylish and gregarious, and he also had a passion for adventure and a sense of humor. This made a big impact on my sister Emma Sergeant, who is a renowned artist. He was and still is a great father.
My dad, even at his old age, retains his determination, bravery, and strength. This was until he encountered the NHS.
The failures in our health system are summarized by what happened to him. It has led me to conclude that problems I identified almost two decades ago have only worsened, exacerbated by the Government’s obsession with Covid.
Soon, it became apparent that basic care was lacking. My father suffered from bedsores. NHS England admits pressure ulcers are a ‘mainly avoidable harm associated with healthcare delivery’.
In other words, they are caused by poor nursing and so widespread it costs the NHS more than £3.8 million daily in increased illness and late discharges.
Or as my father put it: ‘The nurses left me sitting on my bum all day. No one worried at all.’
My father didn’t receive the necessary care for his age. He was complaining of hunger.
I’m bloody annoyed to be chained up here for another night
He had severe skin reactions after the nurses didn’t clean him up.
After three days, a physio rang me to get ‘a benchmark’ of what my father was like before he entered hospital.
The man in front of her was a listless, slumped fellow who refused to raise his hand when she asked.
It was a crushing feeling. He was nothing like the father that I knew. For while he may not be mobile, just the previous weekend we had chatted animatedly, and he’d had no trouble raising his hand when it held a glass of champagne to toast my mother.
Imagine what it was like to be confined in such an environment.
Harriet (pictured) firmly believes our myopic adherence to Covid ‘guidance’ is blinding us to the fundamental failings of the NHS
It’s all too clear to me that medics are blindly following Covid rules that demean the dignity of patients — especially the elderly.
My father was almost entirely on his own in his Covid Ward, and his joy de vivre quickly faded until he could barely keep his head up.
I will be honest and say that this was due more to Omicron than his initial infection. He was my greatest fear.
I now firmly believe our myopic adherence to Covid ‘guidance’ is blinding us to the fundamental failings of the NHS — an inability to deliver basic patient care, as my father has sadly discovered. ‘Covid didn’t make me ill. It was the NHS,’ he says today.
It enrages me to think of the hypocrisy of a Government that saw fit to hold boozy parties at the height of the first lockdown — yet still, almost two years on, keeps vulnerable patients trapped on isolation wards with staff who are at best indifferent, at worst callous.
If Boris and his inner circle were able to ‘bring their own booze’ all those months ago, why was my father now forcibly subjected to a horrendous ordeal?
However, nurses weren’t all uncaring. But my father’s care, as he described it himself, was ‘spasmodic’.
Updates were sent to me when a kind nurse was present. My father was given cups of coffee, and she brought him an iPad so we could see each other, to which my father exclaimed: ‘Bless her heart!’ But in her absence nothing appeared to get done. ‘The other nurse walks past me when I call,’ my father said.
It was initially attributed to the busy Covid ward. My father snorted: ‘There’s only two of us patients here.’ Desperate to get him out, after four days, I tried to persuade the doctor to let my father come home.
Both my mother and the carer had tested positive for Covid. This was again almost symptomless. If everyone had coronavirus at home, then why was my father being kept in isolation?
Dr. Ummed. He would be kept in the hospital for observation for a couple of more days. She promised that if his health deteriorated, she would ensure that he dies at home.
Harriet (pictured), stated that she thought her father was safe after being discharged. However, he was left alone in the cold ambulance.
Shaken, I explained this to my father — only for the nurse to call me immediately to discuss his discharge. This meant that he was probably dying. It was not clear if anyone knew and there wasn’t any way to contact the doctor.
Death, however, was certainly not on my father’s agenda. It was a joy for him to be able to come home and eat a good meal. ‘Put the champagne on ice!’ he ordered.
After he was incapacitated, the ambulance crew arrived to help him. They were busy, and they weren’t available. My father’s spirits soared.
Suddenly, the nurse on duty said: ‘He’s not going home.’
‘Why not?’ demanded my father.
‘I am not ready and no one told me,’ she said, flouncing off. The men in the ambulance shook their heads and turned to go.
‘That was a bad moment,’ said my father later on the mobile, ‘I’m bloody annoyed to be chained up here for another night.’ His voice dropped. ‘Get me out of here,’ he begged.
The next morning, five days after he left home, ‘after a lot of faffing around with bits of paper’, the ambulance with my father in pulled up outside my parents’ house. Then disaster struck. The two-man ambulance crew suddenly realised my father was not ‘weight-bearing’.
He was too heavy and couldn’t lift himself out of an ambulance. This information was not relayed by the nurses to the crew. To help, the men called another ambulance crew. They needed extra protection because my dad had Covid.
Dad again waited. Because my mother was too weak to get to an ambulance and too upset and confused to call, I waited.
Following a difficult week, I felt calm and confident that my dad was safe. But instead, I found my father alone in the ambulance. ‘It was bloody freezing. I was getting colder and colder.’
My father was always optimistic and full of vitality. He did it because he had never done anything before. Not even during wartime, when he was an 18 year old seaman aboard a North Atlantic corvette warship. He finally gave up. ‘I honestly thought I was going to die in that ambulance.’
Harriet (pictured), said that her father’s caregiver was shocked at his return from the hospital. She took photos in case the family needed them.
He was finally carried upstairs by the second crew after being taken to safety for 90 minutes. My father has almost returned to normal after a few days of good care at home.
His carer told me that she was shocked at his state when he came home from the hospital. She had taken photos of his bedores and rash so we could complain.
We opted against. We are a small family and don’t have much spare time. We don’t want to spend it lost in the bureaucracy of the NHS complaints procedure.
Despite what we encountered, I do believe it is unfair to pick on the individuals responsible — the spiteful nurse, the lack of basic nursing, the incompetent discharge service or the callous ambulance men.
The many NHS employees who give their best are also at odds with them.
No, the outstanding feature of my father’s care was its sheer randomness. My father saw disorganization and indifference in one day. This was often within one hour.
‘What the ward needed was a good editor,’ said my father, as a former journalist. ‘No one appeared to be in charge. I kept asking for matron.’
The NHS has been averse to matron for a long time. The idea of an authoritative figure is not liked by many nursing workers and unions. They dismiss the old-fashioned matron as ‘sexist’.
It is contrary to the NHS culture, I learned from shadowing sister matrons and other sisters.
As one sister explained sadly to me then: ‘We are a caring profession who sometimes put caring for each other above caring for patients.’
As a nursing assistant was being reprimanded for violating the infection rules flagrantly, I saw her gobsmacked. Then she realized that she had been too harsh. ‘I don’t like to nag.’
These events occurred years ago and not much seems to have changed. A nurse who is not a professional or humane enough to care for my dad’s bedores can be ignored by authority.
It is not punishable if the woman forgets to take care of their business. There is no reward or punishment for ambulance personnel who work hard during their shift. Nor are there any consequences for people who leave colleagues in need to take up the pieces.
As my parents’ carer had seen the week before. There is no cure for the problem or improvement in patient care without a shift of culture.
My father sat back in his home and raised a glass to celebrate. ‘It’s not a bad old life,’ he said.
My dear old father is my only concern. My dad survived the septicaemia. Thanks to the vaccine program, he was able to get through Covid. The NHS was almost enough to save him. This is not something that I will forget easily or forgive.