UK - "Patient abuse caught on film labelled 'torture'&q

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This sort of thing has been going on for many, many years - in particular in elderly people's homes. Nothing will really change, "lessons will be learnt" and the cycle will continue. There is no political will to change anything, or if there are 'changes' they will be superficial. There is too much money involved in treating vulnerable patients badly.

A lot of the staff in these homes aren't qualified or in some cases even CRB checked! I rail against the CRB system in many other circumstances because I believe that it's corrosive to civil society and, in its enhanced form is open to injustice (because it includes unsubstantiated gossip/tittle-tattle) but working alone with vulnerable people in such a setting is undoubtedly one of the occasions where such a scheme is most justified.

There is also a practice in mainstream public hospitals where there is a bed shortage the nursing staff are encouraged to make the elderly patients walk to the bathroom in order to justify getting them discharged. This happened to my grandfather when he was forced to get up from his bed when he was not ready and he suffered a relapse and died in the bathroom. No coroners inquest.

God knows what happens in mental asylums or hospitals where there is a bed shortage.

I am sorry that your dad died of such injustice. They put Kevorkian in jail for ten years, but hospitials do that sort of thing all the time without the consent of the patient. See the reason for this is the way hospitals are paid by insurance companies. They are paid by the case not the number of days that a patient is in the hospital, so the longer a patient is hospitalized, the more money the hospital loses....all goes back to money.
As far as mental hospitals go, I have been in some good ones and some very bad ones. Usually when there is a bed shortage, they will declare the patient to be instantly cured and send them home in worse shape than when they arrived. I was at a facility in mobile alabama that was shut down by the health department 3 years after I left. I had ptsd after leaving that place it was a hellhole.

Keeping patients mobile is a good thing. Otherwise they develop DVTs and pressure sores. And it's far more dignified for an elderly patient to be helped to the bathroom than to be forced to use a bedpan.
My grandmother died in an NHS hospital - she was admitted because she wasn't controlling her diabetes, and while there they managed to dehydrate her, cause a DVT (through immobility), cause a UTI (by dehydration) and give her MRSA. The neglect was appalling. If you can possibly avoid it, don't go to hospital.

I had the opportunity to watch this panorama documentry tonight.

Even in the worst place I've ever worked in. I've never seen this degree of abuse. That restraint technique within the first 10 minutes of the under cover support worker being on shift. My god they could have killed that poor women.

No suprises this is a private healthcare provider. These kind of companies offer no value for money and poor service quite frankly. I used to work for a company similair to this one all it instilled in me is profit margins and care standards should not be two interests put at odds with each other.

Tell me Jellybean are you still a resident at a certain Brookdale hospital still? I went to one of their facilities awhile back and I thought they were rather institutional, backward in time, seriously over priced and not autism friendly in the slightest. But maybe your experiance of them is more positive then the ones I've encountered?

I've just watched this documentary. The staff were clearly torturing the patients.

Anyone outside the UK can watch it on YouTube:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yuPvUHsx1Y[/youtube]
I heard an interview on the radio with the chief executive of Mencap saying that these institutions should be closed down and replaced with smaller homes that are more like homes. I think these big institutions that depersonalise their patients should definitely go.

I read the secret filmer's report of this in the newspaper. It sounds absolutely horrible. My God my country sucks. I don't think I want to watch the program

And here's an NHS hospital which let an alcoholic die on a corridor floor. Abuse and neglect isn't confined to the private sector.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-ma ... r-13684385

There is a petition on this issue by the National Autistic Society that anyone in the UK can sign:

http://e-activist.com/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=10&ea.campaign.id=10762

There is more about the petition here:

http://www.autism.org.uk/news-and-events/news-from-the-nas/more-regular-independent-inspections-of-care-services-needed.aspx

The whole situation is so horrid, and so sad.

One thinks, "they were torturing some of us!" Grrrrrrrrrr!

Makes me wonder if more of us on the spectrum, but functional, should go into these professions ourselves?

Take care of our own. I don't think you'd find such behavior in an institution run by other autistic folks.

It's too late for me to switch gears, but I can hope some younger people do.

They would say we aren't the caring types, but we aren't the torturing types either.