Shropshire patient left to change in hospital corridor 'felt exposed'

A woman treated in a hospital corridor says the lack of privacy was "wholly inappropriate" after other patients saw her without a top.

Isabel Aston was taken to Princess Royal Hospital in Shropshire with pneumonia and sepsis and said she spent seven hours on a bed in a corridor.

She said she felt exposed when other patients saw her changing her clothes.

She explained: "People were walking in both directions [and] there aren't screens around your bed so people wanting the toilet who couldn't get out of bed were faced with the thought of using a bed pan in full view."

She added that on feeling hot at one point, she wanted to change her t-shirt, but the process proved lengthy due to cannulas in her arms.

"I did not have anything on underneath," she said. "I'm 64 years of age, I've probably reached an age where I'm not so self-conscious perhaps, but that could have been a much younger patient.

"That could have been a patient for whom perhaps culturally they couldn't have change their t-shirt... or somebody who had mastectomy scars [and] were very self conscious.

"It is wholly inappropriate for patients to be so exposed when they are so ill."

The hospital trust said it aimed to maintain patients' dignity despite being under operational pressures.

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 28 July 2023