A Welsh Hospital on Trial Week In Week Out

A Welsh Hospital at the centre of a major police investigation.

Tonight, families speak out for the first time.

The police were there and something to do with dad and the hospital.

I was thinking what on earth was going on?

They tell us of their serious concerns of basic standards of care.

When we got there she was in a hell of a state.

I could look at her, I can picture her now.

So, is this the Welsh Mid Staffordshire Hospital scandal?

It goes to the top.

You haven't got an effective governance system in place.

And we question that man at the top.

Why are you still in your job?

When we got there she was in a hell of a state.

I can picture her now.

I think that thought will stay with me for the rest of my days.

I could literally see my mother wasting away before

my eyes in this hospital bed.

She was sedated to such a debilitating extent, we found her

slumped in a chair virtually unconscious, soaked in urine.

These nurses,

you regard them as friends then, because they're a support.

To actually do this to your loved one,

how can somebody do that?

This is the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend.

It's been under the spotlight because

of the suspension of 14 nurses, some of whom have admitted criminally

neglecting elderly patients.

Serious enough in itself, but there are

ongoing concerns that allegations of poor care have not been addressed,

and that management is not doing enough to listen to public concerns.

Families affected by the court case were thrown

together - their worlds turned upside down by a knock at the door.

The police were there and it was something to do with Dad and

the hospital.

I was thinking what on earth was going on?

It didn't sink in.

I said, what are you trying to say?

Are you trying to say they've helped towards my mother's death?

And she just... Like that.

I said to him, then I can't deal with this.

I have to get out of here, I can't deal with this.

I was totally shocked that my mum was even involved in any of this.

The police investigation at the hospital resulted

in the arrest of five nurses.

Three admitted wilfully neglecting patients.

But last month the trial of two nurses who denied

the charges collapsed.

They were found not guilty, leaving families with more questions

than answers.

The families hadn't known each other.

All they had in common was that known each other.

their loved ones ended up at the Princess of Wales Hospital.

All the affected patients were elderly, and had diabetes.

Nurses were accused of neglecting them.

For reasons unknown, some nurses falsified the record

of their blood-sugar tests.

Two nurses have pleaded guilty to the wilful neglect of Alun Evans.

He's now cared for at home by his family after suffering

a stroke in May, 2012.

That's Lorna.

She's living up in Birmingham now.

We haven't seen her for years, have we?

The stroke left him in a coma for 20 days at the Princess

of Wales Hospital.

The day he came out of the coma, we'd just seen the consultant,

and they didn't think he was going to survive.

They didn't know how he'd lasted so long.

I could see his hand moving.

I said, Dad, can you hear me, squeeze my hand?

He squeezed my hand, which was the first sign we'd had in three weeks.

Alun is a diabetic.

And now, after the involvement of the police,

his family have been left wondering if his coma was in any way connected

to his blood sugar levels, and the falsification of his records.

These nurses, after being in the ward for so long,

you regard them as friends then, because they're a support.

To actually do this to your loved one and not do

the care they are supposed to do, it's sort of a thing of disbelief.

How can somebody do that?

After finding out now about what the nurses have done,

I was just wondering, did that contribute to him staying

in the coma as long as he was?

Emma's family were hoping the court case would answer that

and other questions.

What all the families want to know is did

my loved one suffer as a result of the actions of these nurses?

What the court case exposed was shocking

- that nurses falsified records.

But it also revealed serious concerns about poor care

in the hospital.

Gareth Williams is one of those with concerns about poor care.

His mother, Lillian, was in her 80s.

She was a very resilient lady, she was disabled from a very young age.

She lost her leg as the result of an accident.

She still brought five children up.

She worked all her life.

She put us all through university.

She taught us to be hard-working.

She was one of the patients neglected

by the nurses at the hospital.

My mother had been admitted to the Princess of Wales for different

reasons many times over the years.

We had always been impressed by the way she was treated

and the way she was cared for.

But all that changed when Lilian was admitted to ward 6

in 2010 with suspected shingles.

It was a Friday night and Gareth says she wasn't given any food,

water or her own medicines for at least 36 hours.

By mid-afternoon on Saturday, she had gone

into what appeared to be a coma.

She was delirious at first, then became unconscious.

She was perspiring profusely.

When we told them she was going to die for want of medical attention,

they told us it was impossible to get a doctor, as it was the weekend

and the only doctors in the hospital were in A

After that, Gareth and his family ensured one

of them was with Lilian from early morning until late at night.

It didn't improve at all.

She was lying in faeces.

She was a very proud lady.

She could walk to the toilet if someone helped her to put her

leg on.

She could use a commode if someone brought one for her.

When we asked nursing staff why she'd been left in faeces, they told

us it was impossible with the shortage of staff to get two members

of staff to lift her out of bed.

Gareth and his family complained about Lilian's care, and they were

assured that an investigation would take place - called a POVA,

or Protection of Vulnerable Adults.

But it never happened.

It is an absolute disgrace that no-one has been held to account

for what the health board has admitted were false assurances

and false statements about a POVA investigation that never took place.

She was very outgoing, wasn't she?

Loved life, loved her grandchildren.

Loved life to the full.

Bingo. Holidays.

Everywhere we went, she wanted to come with us.

Jean Preece's family are having to come to terms with

the fact that their mother was also neglected, and they have a host

of other concerns about her care.

Jean had a stroke in November 2012, and she was admitted to ward 2

at Bridgend hospital.

At first I thought it was all right, to be honest.

Until a bit later on, I started seeing tablets on the floor.

They weren't feeding her, were they?

They weren't giving her drinks.

Her food would be left on the table.

Bell behind her head tied up.

That's when I just started taking little notes down now.

That's what I done.

You used to go down there at dinner time and stay there, didn't you?

To make sure she had something to eat.

We were so concerned and we brought it to their attention but

it was just falling on deaf ears.

The couple say they did raise concerns with staff on ward 2.

I don't like to complain too much because obviously I have got to

come home at night, knowing that she's got to be under their care.

Earlier that same year, 2012, Gareth's mother was admitted to the

Princess of Wales Hospital again.

She was taken to ward 6 again.

And again, her family were unhappy with her care.

They'd assured us they would under no circumstances sedate her.

It had happened in 2010 and we wanted to be sure it didn't

happen again in 2012.

It did happen again, the nurses had given her zopiclone and temazepam.

Gareth was so concerned he recorded two videos

of his mother on the ward.

We found her one morning slumped in a chair, virtually unconscious,

soaked in urine,

with her medication dissolving in pools of urine next to bloody swabs

which had dropped from her arm.

When we asked the nurse, "Have you been sedating her?"

she said, "Yes, we have."

I said, "Why were you sedating her?

We were promised that wouldn't happen."

She said "It's all right for the doctors to promise you that

"but they are not here in the night when they're screaming out."

She said, "I can't sleep with my leg on," which we knew.

The metal would bite into the area around her knee

and cause her great pain.

And she said "Since I've been in here they haven't taken my leg off."

Gareth filmed another video on his phone, this time to show

that Lilian's tablets from the night before hadn't been taken.

I went to police and social services and showed them

some of the video recordings of her mistreatment on that ward.

Straight away they told us they would have her moved.

The health board did hold a POVA investigation into Lilian's care

on ward 6 - many of the allegations were proved.

They included her unnecessary sedation at night, failure to care

for her amputated limb, and failure to administer prescribed medicine.

It didn't uphold the complaint that she was left soaked in her own

urine and slumped in her chair.

The health board also says it is not aware of any evidence that

Mrs Williams' poor care caused her actual harm.

Until the nurses who've pleaded guilty

have been sentenced, the health board says it cannot yet comment

fully on our families' concerns.

The man in charge is Paul Roberts.

I think we have a historical legacy of families we've not dealt with

properly and it's been hard for us to get back in the right place

with those families.

The fact we've had a police and criminal

investigation hasn't helped that.

I'm really frustrated about that.

Once that...

It wouldn't stop you saying sorry...

What we're planning to do is, as soon as the court case is over,

that we plan to write to families affected by that and invite them

in if they want to come and talk to us about concerns.

In that letter there will be an apology because we already owe

one, quite clearly.

In 2012, there were other wards at the Princess of Wales Hospital

in Bridgend where families had concerns about patient care.

Including ward 20.

That's my mum and my dad, undoubtedly on one

of their travels together.

They were always off gallivanting.

By 2012, Sonia Phillips had developed dementia.

After being admitted to the hospital,

she eventually ended up on ward 20 and that's when the family became

concerned about her nursing care.

They were supposed to be keeping records of everything she ate

and drank.

Because the concern is with somebody with dementia, they can't do any

of that for themselves.

It's whether they're getting appropriate

nourishment, not losing weight.

I could literally see my mother wasting away before

my eyes in this hospital bed.

She was getting increasingly frail, which is why I kept asking why

records of feeding and drinking were not being maintained.

Were you satisfied the staff were sufficiently trained in how to

deal with a patient of that type?

I don't think any of the hospital staff,

and this includes the doctors, are truly aware of what dementia is.

They would shout at her and say to her, "Mrs Phillips,

can you tell us where the pain is?"

and I told them that she couldn't communicate that with them

but they still insisted on shouting at an elderly,

frail lady and asking her to tell them what was wrong with her.

Back on ward 2, Jean Preece's family were becoming increasingly

concerned about her care.

They say they would regularly get a phone call at the weekend saying

Jean had taken a turn for the worse.

Your heart is racing.

You don't know exactly what you're going to see.

When you get there she's going into a coma, which they should have

spotted and there never should have been a reason for you to be called,

you know?

Veronica and Wayne, himself a diabetic, say

when they arrived at the ward they found the nurses often didn't know

what to do, and it was only when they explained that Jean was having

a diabetic low that they acted.

Even if they give her a glass of milk it would have brought her

out of it you know.

But unless you administrate it, it will go lower and lower until

in the end it will kill you.

On the day Jean died, her family feared her diabetes

wasn't managed properly again.

They say staff told them Jean's blood sugar levels had been tested,

but again they failed to recognise she was having a diabetic low.

When we got there she was in hell of a state.

I could look at her - I can picture her now.

It will stay with me for the rest of my days.

She didn't know where she was, couldn't move, or anything.

I could see automatically she's having a real bad low.

On this day, Wayne and Veronica say the nurses didn't have anything

on the ward to bring Jean out of the low and staff eventually went to

the hospital shop to buy a bottle of Lucozade to try to help her.

But it was too late.

Were patients harmed as result of poor care between 2010 and 12?

I think that's a very difficult thing for me to answer.

We've looked into individual complaints, one or two ombudsman

cases, and in some cases concluded harm has been caused, others there

was poor care, not direct harm.

One would have to go back to those individual cases to pick that up.

Families think there have been - until they get answers to their

satisfaction there always be doubt.

Sure.

One thing I've said several times in this interview is the concerns

those families want to raise we want to listen, involve them and make

sure their concerns addressed as far as we possibly can.

At the beginning of 2013, the health board was also concerned

about relatively high mortality rates at the hospital, and it

commissioned an external review.

At about the same time we understand a nurse decided to blow the whistle

- she told managers nurses had been falsifying blood glucose readings.

The health board investigated, and found 15 nurses had apparently

falsified records at least five times.

They called in the police.

The police launched a criminal investigation

and five nurses were arrested on suspicion of wilful neglect.

They were all accused of falsifying patients' blood-glucose readings.

Amongst the patients affected were Gareth's mother, Lilian,

Veronica's mother, Jean, and Karen's mother, Sonia Phillips.

A total of nine patients were the victims of neglect by

the three nurses who pleaded guilty, including Emma Brittain's father.

After hearing dates, I was thinking this was going

on while we were there.

I'm quite angry now.

I'm angry they didn't do their job properly, and it could

have been fatal to my father.

There's questions I would like to ask them, why they did it?

Why they put patients' lives at risk.

When you go into nursing, you go into save people's lives.

Three nurses are still waiting to be sentenced after admitting

the wilful neglect of patients.

14 are suspended from the Princess of Wales hospital and one more

from another.

Gareth was so concerned about his mother's care, he went to

see the health minister at the Welsh Government, in October 2013.

He told us he was appalled by what he was seeing.

We made it clear to him in that meeting we expected some

sort of inquiry.

We were hoping it would look back a number of years

and hold to account the managers.

Gareth says he was in contact with the health minister's office,

and he claims he was told there would be a full retrospective

review, which would include the time his mother was in hospital.

The following month, the health minister Mark Drakeford

did announce a review but Gareth claims its scope was limited.

We felt completely and utterly betrayed by Mark Drakeford.

The review was so stilted and so rigged, it couldn't possibly examine

the concerns we had raised with him.

Whilst its remit was criticised, when the report, called Trusted to

Care, was published in May 2014, it was damning.

It said that aspects of care of frail, older people were "simply

unacceptable" and should be addressed "as a matter of ugency."

The report described a "sense of hopelessness" in its care

of frail, elderly patients.

It found "poor professional behaviour" and "a lack

of suitably qualified, educated and motivated staff."

One patient told the review team:

"I am in hell".

I want to put on record my own unreserved apology

to those individuals and their families whose care has

fallen short of the standard that they had a right to expect.

I was shocked but I wasn't surprised.

The shock was that some of the descriptions of care in that

report, and there were direct quotes from relatives, anyone with

a heart and any sense of compassion would be shocked about them.

They are the sort of things that should never happen in any

hospital or caring environment.

Gareth is now campaigning for a much more extensive inquiry into

previous failings at this hospital.

This is the Facebook site we set up shortly after my mother's death.

What we wanted to do was to reach out to others who'd suffered

like we'd suffered in the hope that somehow

the camaraderie of the victims would help them through the crisis.

Since you set this site up, what sort of response have you had to it?

The site is very popular.

Very often when we put a post on the site you get two or three

thousand viewing that post.

Julie Bailey campaigned for years for a full public inquiry into

the scandal at Mid Staffordshire.

She helped expose a catalogue of serious failings at Stafford

Hospital, where her mother died.

What I said at the beginning was I would be a thorn in the government's

side and that's what I did.

We were so determined we wouldn't let them push us around so we'd

stand out literally, wherever they would be, we'd be with our placards.

There are those in the Welsh Government who say

the Princess of Wales Hospital at Bridgend is not another Mid Staffs.

Would you be confident of making that link?

Very much so.

I think the similarities we've got with the

ward failings, neglect of vulnerable people, goes out to other wards.

But it goes to the top, failings right at top, complaints,

you haven't got effective governance system in place.

You've put your mum in hospital, found failings,

then told lessons have been learnt and then go back into the hospital,

told those failings haven't been learnt, that's a system failure

and that needs a full examination.

Gareth's more convinced than ever that an inquiry with

a much wider remit should be held.

Those failures were alerted to them from 2010.

Yet June Andrews found those failings were being

repeated four years later.

Staff on the wards, the nurses, have taken much of the criticism

for the catastrophe of care in that hospital.

Not a single manager has been brought to account.

We've got a situation where police have been brought in,

14 nurses have been suspended, you've got families still looking

for answers to questions - why on earth are you still in your job?

The fundamental difference with the Staffordshire situation was

that they were, when the inquiry was set up, they were

in complete denial, we are not.

We're on public record, go back and look as saying we have

significant problems here - we have not cared for some people well.

Some of the families think nurses are being hung out to dry and not a

single manager lost his or her job.

I do entirely understand why families and patients could be very

angry and they see me as top of the organisation.

We understand that two people are being investigated for

their role whilst managers at the hospital, between 2010 and 2012.

Dr Bill Kirkup chaired the recent inquiry into Morecambe

Bay, where mothers and babies died unnecessarily in the maternity unit.

He says families must be put at the heart of any concerns

about patient care.

It's paramount.

I absolutely don't think any of us can afford to say to people

there's nothing to see here.

You have to be open with people, take them into your confidence and

explain what all the information is.

You can't afford to close that off without satisfying people's

desire to understand exactly what's happened.

He says while families continue to have serious concerns

about the Princess of Wales hospital, something must be done.

Where people have a level of concern about something that

hasn't gone away, then we in the service have to be accountable to

them for answering those concerns.

It does appear we haven't done that yet,

so we need to do something else.

Dr Kirkup said any future action would be a matter for the

Welsh Government.

We asked the health minister, Mark Drakeford, to be interviewed

for this programme.

We had a host of questions for him about the Trusted to Care Review,

concerns about patient care at the Princess of Wales Hospital, and

those demands for a public inquiry.

But Mr Drakeford declined to take part in our programme.

Today, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives challenged

the health minister at the Assembly government, saying families were

desperate and isn't it time they were given a public inquiry?

A follow-up to the Trusted to Care Review was published this year.

And it says whilst there are still some problems, the hospital

is continuing to improve.

We've had independent experts coming in and looking at that and they say

there is sufficient progress to indicate we've gone about this with

huge commitment, huge energy and there have been tangible results.

We have definitely got more to do to improve elements of care

in the organisation, and I think there always will be.

But for the families at the heart of this story, there still remain

a host of unanswered questions - particularly after the collapse

of the court case.

I felt it would give me answers and because it collapsed I now don't

know those answers, and I don't know I ever will have those answers.

It's just made me angry about the whole situation

and I feel I can't properly grieve for my mum, and I haven't been able

to properly grieve for my mum since she passed away in June last year.

Karen now plans to request her mother's medical records

from the hospital, with a view to putting in a formal complaint.

The experience at Bridgend has left Emma wary about her father

going into any hospital again.

We don't know what's happening when he's out of our care,

which shouldn't be the answer.

We should be able to trust that he will go in

and have the best possible care.

Veronica says it's the managers who should be

accountable - not just nurses.

I would like some answers from health board, I've had nothing

from health board, they know we are part of the families involved

and haven't had an apology, I know some families have had apology

but we as family have had nothing.

As for Gareth, South Wales Police did investigate other allegations

of neglect involving his mother.

But in May of this year, they decided there was insufficient

evidence for a prosecution.

Along with the other families, Gareth is waiting for the three

nurses who pleaded guilty to neglect to be sentenced next month.

He's written a statement he hopes to read to

the court, to explain the impact it's had on him and his family.

Lilian begged us not to return her to the Princess of Wales Hospital.

Her desperate pleas not to be taken back will haunt us to eternity.

We will never forgive ourselves for not listening to her and returning

her there against her wishes.

Lilian died three years ago today.

She leaves many questions and until they are answered,

the families will struggle to move on It's certainly overshadowed the

lives of my family and several other families over the last three years.

And we will keep fighting.

We will keep fighting for increased openness and transparency.