Three women have told of their horror after they were shunted into a store cupboard at a leading hospital surrounded by blood-stained bins.
The outraged patients were surrounded by blood stains, bandages and electrical equipment as they were squeezed into the tiny 12ft by 16ft windowless rooms.
Two shocked MPs today called for an urgent investigation into the scandal at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital as the victims' furious families spoke of their horror.
It comes just a day after the Daily Mail revealed that an 80-year-old female patient was kept in a hospital cupboard for 48 hours.
Pensioner Doris McKeown has kept in the ‘broom cupboard’ for two days, where she was overlooked for medication and meals, awaiting emergency surgery.
In the latest case, frail Rhoda Talbot, 85, said she was forced to spend the night in the shelf-stacked space - called a 'ward treatment room' by hospital chiefs but a ‘stock cupboard’ by her family - during a recent visit.
Her family spoke out as an 80-year-old and a 35-year-old came forward with their own ordeals ahead of emergency surgeries last month and last October.Mrs Talbot, of Tunstead, near Wroxham, Norfolk, was admitted to hospital with a hair-line fracture to her spine on January 25 and spent most of her time in single or double rooms on Heydon Ward.
But the day before she was released the pensioner was moved into the ‘stock cupboard’.
Her son Rod Talbot said: ‘It was literally a store room.
‘There was shelf racking filled with stuff used to run the ward, green buckets with dirty, bloody needles in them and oxygen cylinders.’
Mr Talbot said nursing staff had apologised when he arrived at hospital to visit his sick mother on February 3 and discovered she had been moved.
The vulnerable OAP did not leave hospital until the next day. She had to spend the night in the dark, cramped space, with nurses regularly coming in to collect supplies.
When she was collected by her family the next day, Rhoda said: ‘I’m absolutely shattered. They were in and out all night.
‘Every time they came in they turned the light on.’
The hospital said Mrs Talbot had been assessed by staff and moved to the treatment room as she waited to go home.
A spokesman said: ‘As Mrs Talbot was medically fit for discharge, this meant we could admit a new patient who needed acute hospital care.’
He said while ‘ward treatment rooms’ were only appropriate for patients on a short-term basis, it was occasionally necessary to leave them there until the next morning rather than send them home in the middle of the night.
Mr Talbot said he was not angry with the nurses, who had been ‘brilliant’ throughout his mum’s treatment, but insisted she deserved a full apology for her suffering.
He now plans to write to the hospital's executive to complain.
Helen Howes, 35, complained to the ward sister during her time in a treatment room before urgent surgery on an abscess last month.
She spent time on a trolley in the surgical assessment unit before being moved to a treatment room on Dunston ward, like the one Mrs Talbot was placed in.
Ms Howes was pushed in just two hours after being given a proper bed.
She said: ‘When I got there I told the nurse I was not happy. She said ~weren~t you told this was where you would be'?~
Ms Howes said she was hemmed in by dressing packs, catheter bags and other medical supplies.
Her bag was put on a medical waste bin.
‘There were no windows and I couldn’t see any nursing staff, although I could hear them because I was next to the staff area,’ she said.
The stunned mother-of-one did not sleep all night, as nursing staff came in and out to collect equipment.Even in the night I was having my bed moved across because they needed to get to something on the left-hand side and my bed was too close for them to open the drawers,' said Ms Howes.
The following day she complained again, this time to the ward sister.
Staff agreed with her that it was not a good situation and were not happy about it themselves.
Ms Howes, of Newton St Faiths, near Norwich, said: ‘I don’t lay blame on the nursing staff.
‘They are powerless.
‘They knew it was common practice. They knew it wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last.
‘I wanted to highlight the completely unacceptable manner in which vulnerable patients, who perhaps feel too ill at the time to complain or feel they don’t have a voice to raise these issues, are treated.’
Doris McKeown, 80, had a very similar experience while waiting for emergency surgery at the same hospital.
The pensioner was stored away in a treatment room on the elderly care unit, which she labelled a ‘broom cupboard’, for 48 hours last October.
Mrs McKeown, of Bungay, near Lowestoft, Suffolk, was moved there at 2am on October 22 - a full 48 hours before an operation to treat compression of the nerves in her spine.
Her daughter Dr Helena McKeown said last night: ‘I spoke to her on a mobile phone the next morning.
‘She said she had woken up in a cupboard. I was told this was happening to a lot of people, a lot of the time.’
Dr McKeown, who is a GP in Wiltshire and chairman of the community care committee for the British Medical Association, said the walls of the room were lined with shelves piled high with catheters and other equipment.
There was also a cupboard which nurses used to store their handbags, and a chair next to Mrs McKeown’s bed had to be moved several times to allow staff to access supplies.
The family did not make a complaint at the time and were keen to stress the nurses and doctors were ‘excellent’ throughout the pensioner’s stay.
Dr McKeown, 42, added: ‘They were embarrassed and apologetic. These were staff who were making the best of the circumstances they were in.’
Hospital director of nursing Christine Baker said: ‘Our interest is in making sure all our patients get the best possible care and that their dignity and privacy is protected.
‘We carefully assess any patient’s needs before they are placed in a ward clinical treatment room.’
North Norfolk MP and Lid Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb said he understood the hospital was under ‘impossible pressure’ to free up more space.
But he stressed: ‘Where you have got someone who is recovering, shoved into what looks like a stock room and being constantly disturbed, it is not an acceptable arrangement.’
Chloe Smith, Tory MP for Norwich North, said: ‘It hardly seems like the treatment frail and vulnerable people would wish to have at a hospital. I hope the hospital will consider the practice carefully.’
The Care Quality Commission, which regulates health and social care, said it had been made aware of the issue and was talking to the NNUH Trust about it.
A spokesman said: ‘We will take action if it is found that action is at all required.’
The hospital said ward treatment rooms were needed to free up beds for patients in need of more urgent care.
Spokesman Andrew Stronach described it as a ‘clinical escalation step’ which would only be used on patients who had been risk-assessed by medical staff.
It usually involved people who were deemed ‘medically fit for discharge’ and were waiting to leave.
Mr Stronach said: ‘When we have exceptionally high levels of emergency admissions, in common with other hospitals, we do care for patients in escalation areas which include the clinical treatment rooms on our wards.’
He claimed many hospitals in the UK and abroad followed the same procedure.
The hospital has 27 wards with similar rooms, which all have call bells and were described as appropriate for ‘certain patients’ on a ‘short term basis only’.
The hospital has seen a 10 per cent increase in emergency admissions which it admitted had presented ‘operational challenges’.
But it insisted the site had more beds than the two hospitals it replaced in 2001.
Mr Stronach also said that there were 102 extra beds at the site compared with this time last year.
He said there was not a shortage of beds today but patient numbers and demand on space fluctuated every day.
Mr Stronach said figures for how many people were staying in treatment rooms at the moment, and how many had been moved there so far this winter, were not available.
Vulnerable: Rhoda Talbot, 85, was put into a store room at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital after surgery for a spine fracture
Cramped: The space where Doris McKeown was left overnight and kept awake by nurses who accessed the place to collect supplies
Under fire: Norfolk and Norwich Hospital said the room Mrs McKeown (below) was kept in was a treatment room, not a cupboard
'Regular problem': Doris McKeown lies in the windowless store cupboard where she spent two days before surgery
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