Tunbridge Wells woman 'appalled' by treatment of dying father

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A GRIEVING woman said her 90-year-old father "died a lonely and undignified death" after Tunbridge Wells Hospital farmed him out to a care home without telling the family.

Judith Pryke, of St Luke's Road, has lodged a formal complaint with the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust after her father Ronald was moved to a care home in Staplehurst without her knowledge.

Mr Pryke was discharged from the hospital in Pembury in October last year after three months as an inpatient.

Against pleas from his family, he was sent to a nursing home his children could not reach without a car, and without speaking to the family.

The trust said the placement, at Iden Manor Nursing Home in Staplehurst, was temporary, but Mr Pryke never left and died in care in January this year.

Now Ms Pryke, his eldest daughter, is demanding answers after decisions were taken over her and her father's heads about his end-of-life care.

She told the Courier: "My dad died a very lonely and undignified death and we couldn't even get to see him. It is appalling what we had to go through. I don't want anybody else to go through what we had to.

"They just said we were bed-blocking. If that's how the elderly are being treated within this trust it must be happening all over the country. I feel the elderly don't have a voice. It is appalling how his care was taken out of our hands.

"We knew he couldn't stay in hospital forever. We went from care home to care home, and we found one that we liked, but we couldn't get a space so we went on the waiting list.

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Tunbridge Wells woman 'appalled' by treatment of dying father