I’ve often mentioned carer emails in these News items, but this time I’d like to mention a new topic from a carer email.
A gentleman got in touch because he’s the emergency contact for his mum, who’s in a care home, but the care home has now announced that it won’t be sending a member of staff with a resident if the resident needs to go to hospital. That’s understandable, from an admin and costing perspective, but it makes people living with dementia hugely vulnerable if they arrive in hospital with no carer of their own. That gentleman wasn’t readily available to get to his mum’s local hospital in an emergency, so he was obviously worried.
In the past, I’ve witnessed many people with dementia, unaccompanied, in a hospital setting and not at that stage admitted. The worst example was a lady who had no idea where she lived, nor could she tell the hospital team anything about herself, so the staff had no idea at all how to get her back to her own home; nobody knew which care home it was and any paperwork from the ambulance had by then gone astray. All I could do, as a member of the public (it wasn’t a Scheme member hospital), was to engage her in some sort of conversation, to reduce her anxiety, whilst the hospital team made enquiries.
If you find that this situation could arise with someone you care for and who lives in a care home, and their local hospital is a Butterfly Scheme member, please contact the hospital and ask to be linked with the Butterfly Scheme Lead. Most of the Leads will be able to create a flag on a person’s file so that appropriate information can be accessed, should such an emergency arise; they may also be able to scan in a basic carer sheet, completed by you, so that at least the permanent facts from that (although obviously not the elements which change) could be made available if the need arose.
If your local hospital isn’t part of the Scheme, I’d always suggest contacting its Dementia Lead and asking what can be put in place, because there may be something they can do, too.
It’s always worth thinking ahead in anything concerning a person living with dementia’s care, so that problems can be avoided wherever possible. This one’s definitely worth doing.