Jane Kelly

Is the way our hospitals treat old people down to underfunding – or organised neglect?

In my three years as a hospital visitor, the picture hasn’t got any better

I am leaving London soon, coming to the end of my time as a voluntary hospital visitor working from a chaplaincy in a London teaching hospital. I have been roaming around a variety of wards for the last three years, only one day a week, but in those few hours I have seen quite a lot. The most disturbing things have been the poor quality food, which cannot aid anyone’s recovery, and the neglect of the very old and vulnerable, the patients rather ominously labelled ‘bed blockers’.

On my last visit, the Anglican chaplain was not in the hospital, so instead of attending a morning service with him in the hospital chapel, I went up onto the wards early, at breakfast time. In one ward there is a neighbour of mine, an old man I’ve known for years. At first I didn’t recognise him as he has become so thin. He was asleep and his meal, two large pieces of thick, uncut, unbuttered white toast, lay untouched on a tray near his bed. If he’d been awake he wouldn’t have been able to reach it, and if he’d been able to reach it, he couldn’t have chewed it, I happened to know, because his dentures had been left at home. Gumming his way through those big leathery slices wasn’t going to work.

As his tea was also sitting in a mug going cold, I woke the old man and encouraged him to drink — just to get something into his wasted body. He said that all he really wanted was some soup, so I went off to the kitchen to see if I could find some. It seemed like it must be quite a normal request in a big hospital: isn’t soup the food of invalids, let alone toothless ones, worldwide?

On my way to the kitchen a young Spanish-speaking supervisor suddenly appeared at the end of the ward.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in