SHOCKING lapses in care on a ward for elderly people at Basingstoke hospital prompted MP Andrew Hunter to demand that standards must improve.

The Gazette has learned that Mr Hunter met with hospital trust chief executive Mary Edwards on March 14 after receiving what he called "horrific allegations" from relatives of four patients on ward F1.

A health care assistant on F1, who was a former nurse, also wrote to Mr Hunter saying: "I ended my shift profoundly shocked at the conditions I had witnessed".

Mr Hunter told The Gazette: "It was very alarming. The allegations were not disputed by the hospital management and I met with them twice.

"However, I want to stress now that I am satisfied that steps have been taken to remedy these problems and I have every confidence in what has been done. I visited the wards and a team has been formed and a senior nurse put in."

Mr Hunter said the use of agency staff had led to a lack of continuity and problems with maintaining standards.

One of the relatives who contacted the Basingstoke MP was Phyllis Smith. Her 90-year-old mother-in-law Dorothy was admitted to F1 in June last year suffering from gangrene in her foot.

Mrs Smith said that having been happy on E floor, her mother-in-law became distressed by the standard of care she received when she moved to F1.

She said her mother-in-law's requests to have the dressing on her foot changed went unheeded for four days, when it should have been done daily.

Mrs Smith said: "There were conditions which should never be permitted in a hospital. The management said they were going to give training in customer care and emptying bedpans. Don't staff know how to treat a person?"

She added other lapses included having to wait one-and-a-half hours for assistance to use a commode, failure to deal with complaints about a urinary infection - hospital managers subsequently agreed in a letter that tests proved she did have an infection - and on two occasions, her mother-in-law's commode bowl was not replaced at night, leading to urination on the floor.

Mrs Smith, a former nurse, said: "We had five meetings about these problems in total. It all seemed down to a lack of staff and the fact many did not speak English.

"They were agency staff and there was no continuity. It was so awful. Mother was in a lot of pain and was lucky that she had us to jump up and down."

Mrs Smith, 69, said her mother-in-law, whose home had been in Stag Hill, Basingstoke, died 19 days after being moved to a nursing home in November.

After complaining about her treatment in F1, the family received a detailed letter of apology from the hospital in October.

In another case raised by Mr Hunter, Lorraine James, of Jersey Close, Popley, Basingstoke said her late 80-year-old mother, who had suffered a stroke, sometimes had to lie in soiled sheets, was not washed, there was no help with exercise and there were delays in providing a bed pan.

She said foreign staff - who were "run off their feet" - also had difficulty in making themselves understood.

She told The Gazette: "My mother was there from February to November and regained speech but in the last few months, she was clearly very, very unhappy. Her quality of life was severely reduced. Elderly patients deserve better."

Mr Hunter's action came as local Community Health Council watchdogs separately issued a string of criticisms about F floor following a visit in January.

They said they found sluices for washing away the contents of bedpans were "appalling". They also found patients, some with dementia, were sometimes not covered decently or suffered a lack of dignity.

They noted there were not enough call bells and that responses to them took too long. CHC members also found the wrong sort of food was being ordered for patients, who could not chew it, and that medication was left on trolleys without staff taking up their responsibility for checking patients swallowed it.

The findings were in a brief report to the latest Community Health Council business meeting.

Hospital trust chief executive Mrs Edwards acknowledged that there certainly had been problems on F floor.

She added they were partly caused by the pressure of increasing number of elderly patients stuck in hospital when they should be elsewhere - the figure has been in the 80s out of 450 available beds.

But another problem has been a chronic shortage of permanent staff in an unglamorous field of nursing, which has led to the use of agency nurses.

She told The Gazette: "With a temporary group of staff, it is more difficult to maintain standards.

"We have put extra effort into recruiting and have been quite successful.

"Mr Hunter was able to witness the improvement in standards we have already achieved.

"We share his concerns about quality, but it is not because he brought it to our attention that we did things."

She said F1 had been one of two "nurse-led units" set up to create a nursing home within the hospital, but they had now been disbanded because of the difficulties.

Mrs Edwards said that as well as the many improvements in training and recruitment for elderly care, next year should see the opening of new nursing home beds in facilities being jointly built by the local NHS and social services.

She denied the demands of hitting targets in other areas led to a lack of resources being put into elderly care.

Mrs Edwards said that nobody had been disciplined over the matters raised, and added: "This was not about discipline but about putting things right."