Patients starved at crisis hospital
Patients at Stafford Hospital were being starved of food for as long as 48 hours, it has emerged.
Bosses at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust have revealed patients were being deprived of food and water by nurses after having their operations repeatedly cancelled.
This is despite guidelines that patients should not be starved for longer than four hours.
Staff at the Weston Road hospital continued the "nil by mouth" procedure in the mistaken belief that was the right thing to do in case patients were put onto the next surgery list.
In instances where operations were cancelled more than once this left patients being denied food and drink for between 24 and 48 hours. Now staff working with patients due to have surgical procedures have been retrained and a zero tolerance approach has been adopted by hospital managers in order to ensure no patient is denied proper food or water.
The findings followed a "nil by mouth" audit at the hospital by bosses from the trust, who spoke to 87 patients out of a possible 143 over a four-day period.
Of those 87 patients, 10 had seen their operations cancelled and were still being starved.
This audit revealed staff were unaware of the guidlines on starvation and that patients were not aware of the benefits of eating and drinking.
The audit also found patients were being kept in the hospital longer because of a lack of reviews by doctors.
Now the trust has warned all staff that they must follow the guidelines and a further review will be carried out later this year.
Manjit Obhrai, medical director at the hospital, said: "The staff were unaware of what the guidelines were. Patients would be put on a surgery list and be starved the night before or the morning they came in. If the list was then cancelled they might be starved again because they might get onto the afternoon list and they could end up being starved a third time.
"Four hours is all you need to starve a patient but we were doing it for much longer periods. This is not happening any more we have told the staff that it is unacceptable."
Antony Sumara, chief executive of the hospital, added: "There is now a clear set of guidelines. We do not starve people for 24 or 48 hours, which is what did was happening before. The staff know that if a patient's operation is cancelled, feed them."
