Man left for hours with broken hip dies in hospital

In the main hospitals' respnses to elderly people has dramatically improved over the last 30 years. The mother of someone I knew fell and broke her hip. At the hospital a nurse told her daughter, whilst standing next to the bed, that her mother was going to die. The old lady was awake ... and started causing a fuss: "I don't want to die! I don't want to die!" They put her in a side room and gave her something to shut her up. She died.

An elderly man in is 90s had a stroke. In the hospital they didn't feed him for three days (he couldn't feed himself). Fortunately his son was told by his neighbour that he was in hospital. When the son turned up he was transferred to a recovery ward. He was able to return home a month later.

Back then it wasn't unusual for doctors to ask the families of elderly patients if they wanted the patient to be treated.

There was a campaign in the early 90s advocating that doctors should be allowed to decide when people should die (Jeremy Paxman was in favour of this).