Many U.K. Hospitals Fail Nutrition Standards

From GulfNews.com (Arabian Gulf). Uh-oh, here comes ANOTHER socialized medicine fallout that's headed our way!

"London: Nearly half of hospitals visited by undercover inspectors are failing to meet basic nutrition standards, a report has warned. Elderly patients are routinely left without anything to drink for hours, with some so dehydrated they are being put on drips. Other patients found themselves regularly being fed by their relatives because nursing staff were too busy to help.

The appalling failings were uncovered by the Care Quality Commission during inspections of NHS wards.

Other concerns highlighted included hospitals slipping Do Not Resuscitate orders inside patients' notes without telling them or their families.

The Commission found 49 out of 100 hospitals were not meeting basic nutrition standards. This included 17 with "moderate" or "major" concerns.

Dehydration contributes to the deaths of more than 800 patients a year and another 300 die malnourished, according to official figures.

On one ward at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals, inspectors found frail patients had not been given a drink for more than ten hours.

Doctors were so concerned some patients were becoming dangerously dehydrated that they put them on drips.

Next week the CQC will publish a full report into its findings, which is expected to urge hospitals to do more to ensure the elderly do not become malnourished or neglected.

There is widespread concern amongst ministers and patient groups that some nursing staff are allowing vulnerable patients to be neglected.

Learning on the job

At Barnsley Hospital inspectors found staff had not been given any training in how to spot which patients might need help eating or drinking — they were just "learning on the job". And at James Paget University Hospital in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, inspectors came across a nurse telling off a frail patient merely for ringing a call bell. In some hospitals, including the Conquest Hospital in St Leonards, East Sussex, it found staff put Do Not Resuscitate orders inside patients' notes without consent from them or their families."

This, in addition to the drug and doctor shortages, is what we have to face if and when Obamacare gets fully enacted. This isn't even chronic illness stuff--this is just old age stuff! I've read stories of mothers delivering babies (on gurneys) out in hallways, and people in ambulances having to spend up to 4 hours in them, because no rooms were available (not even an ER), and we have hospitals closing down in THIS country, and hospitals that avoid maternity stuff altogether because of liability.

Meanwhile, ambulances continue to stack up in hospital parking bays, and who is left to answer the call of another emergency? What happens when there are no ambulances available? People die--on the roadside from car crashes, in homes from heart attacks and strokes, at work from an industrial accident, or wherever these things can happen.

Are you sure you want Obamacare here? If you do, don't ever plan on getting sick or needing an ambulance--eventually, there won't be anyone to get you or help you.

Speaking of nutrition, when my husband went in for some aortic arch repair (he was born with a narrow one), he was there almost a week, and the food they tried to serve him was straight out of a school cafeteria! I made them take it away, and brought in my own every day, along with a multivitamin. He never ate their food while he was there.

How is someone supposed to heal without decent nutrient-dense food to do it with? Thank god I was in a hotel room with a kitchenette, because I definitely made use of it!

His recovery was supposed to take 10 days, but he was out of there in 5--I credit what he was eating BEFORE he went in, and what I was feeding him while he was in there. The record for leaving the hospital after any kind of heart surgery was 4 days--by a Marine.

The guy in the bed next to Hubby was having a quad bypass done (he wasn't fat). I got a look at his pre-op meal, and it looked like someone had scraped the contents of a "sirloin steak" TV dinner onto a plate and served it to him. If he ate like that in his everyday life, no WONDER he was having a quad bypass! No leafy greens, no green of any sort, just meat, mashed potatoes & gravy, and corn.

I wonder what the U.K. patients who do manage to get rooms are fed while they're there--probably worse, if at all. I guess (like in Third World countries) the families have to come in daily and feed patients, as well as change their bed linens.

Yep--the government's trying to kill us (federal and state)--first with hokey nutrition guides and health measures, then lack-of-funding hospital closures, then denial of tests/drugs/procedures, then creating doctor and drug shortages with health insurance revamps, and the final blow, which will mimic what you've read above.

My husband's grandfather died about 20 years ago because Medicare wouldn't pay for his needed heart valve replacement. It's too bad he didn't live long enough to see what became of Medicare--now it's just a huge check-writing machine, and he could've gotten ALL his heart valves replaced, and a transplant besides!