Pensioner’s Stanger Hospital horrors

A senior citizen at Stanger Hospital was left with no choice but to defecate in his bath towel because nurses refused to help him with a bedpan.

Dennis Byrne (71) suffered a broken hip when he fell backwards, trying to fix a curtain at his home in Mandeni.

He was admitted to Stanger Hospital on September 19 but could not be operated on until his sodium levels were high enough.

His fiancé, Anna Victor, does not have a car and out of desperation contacted the Courier when she hit wall after wall when trying to get updates on her partner’s condition.

Victor said hospital staff were rude over the phone, did not make any effort to obtain information for her and, after two weeks in hospital, claimed they did not know who he was.

Victor said when she saw Byrne last Sunday, he had urinated in his drinking water glass because nurses would not help him with the bedpan.

He told her he felt humiliated “doing his business” without the privacy of curtains to shelter him from other patients and visitors.

When the Courier visited Byrne in hospital, there was a strong smell of faeces in the ward.

It turned out he had relieved himself in his bath towel and put it in the bedside cupboard.

“I did it in there and wrapped it up because I could not use the round bottomed bed pan on my own,” he said.

Apparently this was the second time Byrne had relieved himself in his bath towel.

He said the nurses left the bedpan on the floor next to his bed, but would not help him use it.

“I am tied up and cannot move. I need help with the bed pan,” he said.

When Victor visited Byrne again on Sunday, October 4, he had relieved himself in his bath towel again and was crying.

He asked her to wash the towel for him but she threw it away and gave him a new towel.

Victor said it was written in his file that he was eating healthily.

However, she said he had lost a lot of weight and his bones were starting to show.

Victor said she brought food from home every weekend but he did not even eat that and she found it hidden in his bedside cupboard.

“It is as if he has given up and wants to die. He said on Sunday that if he had a gun he would shoot himself in the head,” said Victor, sobbing with grief.

Both Byrne and Victor told the Courier that the worst part was not knowing what was going on and not getting any answers from hospital staff.

According to the code of ethics for nursing practitioners in South Africa, posted on the South African nursing council website, the actions of the hospital’s staff are unethical.

The code of ethics states that “nurses are required to do good and to choose the “best option” of care under given circumstances and act with kindness at all times.

It gives expression to compliance with the “duty to care” as a professional practice imperative.

This code is based on the belief that nurses value respect, dignity and kindness for oneself and others.”

Approached for comment, Agiza Hlongwane of the KZN health department said the case was under investigation, but did not respond to our questions.