Think woeful care is just an NHS problem? HARRIET SERGEANT'S bitter experience proves otherwise Gilly Sergeant experienced sub-standard care at a private London hospital Shock at nurses 'constantly immersed in their computers and devices' The 86-year-old was given a crushed peppermint for stomach pain By Harriet Sergeant The nurses are saying that our mother is mad," hissed my sister down the phone, "You have to come to the hospital right now." Two days before our mother Gilly, aged 86, had been gripped by a severe back spasm. My father, Patrick, lucky enough to have health insurance, had rushed her to one of London's private hospitals. They'd already had one recent experience of an NHS casualty ward - my father, 89, had been left for eight hours on a hospital trolley in acute pain - and they were not going back for more. "The NHS," said my father, "is no place for the elderly." Bad care: Gilly Sergeant, 86, (pictured with husband Patrick) experienced sub-standard service at a private hospital in London But if we thought the NHS was bad, we were about to discover that private healthcare is not much better. It started the moment I stepped out of the lifts on to the ward to which my mother had been admitted. Several nurses at their station sat staring intently at computer screens. No one looked up or acknowledged me. On the wall opposite, a screen flashed up the room numbers of patients ringing for attention. None of the nurses glanced at the screen - or seemed moved to answer the calls. I had spent a year visiting wards in hospitals around the country for a thinktank report on the NHS. I know the signs of poor patient care all too well. But I had not expected to find them in one of central London's most expensive hospitals. Only a day earlier, last July, my mother had seemed to be on the mend. My sister, father and I had been looking forward to taking her home. Now, she was weak and distressed. "I have to get out of here," she announced. I am going to die if I spend another night in this hospital. We were shocked. And, yes, I had been right. Her transformation was partly down to those indifferent nurses - a variety of nationalities were represented: British, Irish, Australian and French. The night before the consultant had prescribed intravenous antibiotics for a bladder infection - something to which she is allergic, as she had told them on admission. The result was chronic indigestion. Shocked: Mrs Sergeant, a former nurse, was astonished at the hospital staff's behaviour at the private care institution "I did not sleep a wink all night," she told me. Quite reasonably, she had asked a nurse for Rennies, available in every newsagent for not much more than £1, but not, it appeared, in one of London's most expensive hospitals. After repeated requests for something to ease her stomach pain, "they crushed up a peppermint and gave that to me." But what disturbed her most, and the reason why she was desperate to leave, was the quality of the nursing. My mother had been a nurse when she was young. She described her amazement at seeing nurses just sitting at their station, absorbed in their computers. Where do they get the time to sit down for so long? When she was a nurse, my mother told me she'd sometimes not sit down a whole shift. I was rushing all the time. Often I was in tears because I was so anxious to get to the next patient. My shift was spent doing things for patients. And here we come to the heart of the problem. We have all heard about the poor standards of nursing in the NHS. Bed sores, malnutrition and dehydration, tell-tale signs of poor nursing, are all too common. To identify the culprit, look no further than the shift in nurse training in the 1980s away from hands-on patient care towards a more academic approach as nurses sought to win parity with doctors. The result, one Irish ward sister told me during my investigation into the NHS, was that new nurses "picture themselves at a computer. They are horrified to discover that 90 per cent of their time is doing things for the patient. Now, sitting at my mother's bedside, I had discovered the same poor nursing was endemic in the private sector, too. The only difference is that you have the privilege of paying for it. On arriving in her room my mother was introduced to a head nurse - "Who I never saw again" - then her own "named" nurse. My mother, not usually one to gripe, said this nurse was "incompetent," and complained that "she had not checked my room before my arrival and nothing was working." That night when my sister and I had tried to phone to check up on mum, none of us could get through. In desperation, I asked the main switchboard for help. They immediately sent a handy-man who discovered the ring tone on my mother's phone had been turned down. As well as being incompetent, the "named" nurse was unkind. Later that evening, she reprimanded my mother for a minor misdemeanour. Strange medication: Mrs Sergeant was given a crushed up peppermint pastille when she asked for something to help with her stomach pain "I was meant to have put some band around my wrist," my mother explained to us the next day. "She shouted at me "I told you to do it. Why didn't you do it?."" "A nasty bully," added my normally mild mother. During that long night, my mother complained the nurses did not come round regularly and that if she did call to someone who did pass her door, "They said they were not my "named" nurse. "When I was a nurse we walked up and down the wards all the time," she recalled. Often just a chat or doing something small was all it needed to settle an anxious patient or soothe someone in pain. She was not the only one to suffer. During the night she repeatedly heard the old man in the next-door room call out. He called out hour after hour. But no one came. It was terribly upsetting to think of him in pain. In the morning events took a more distressing turn. My sister's frantic phone call to me came after a disturbing conversation she'd had with a nurse. In full view and within hearing of my mother she had said: "Your mum is not quite right," and she gestured to her head. When I arrived, a male nurse took us outside the door to my mother's room. He explained that my mother was "confused." My mother called out, "I am not confused. I have just been complaining about your nursing, that's all. I complained that the nursing was poor and he covers up by saying I am mad. The male nurse returned in triumph with a record of nurse visits from the previous night. On the hour every box had indeed been ticked. My mother just glared at him. "I want to leave," she said. The nurse stood firm, insisting our mother was "confused" and the hospital had a duty of care. "Are you saying that legally you can hold on to my mother?" demanded my sister. We felt we were being threatened, and I don't think our concern was without foundation. Thanks to the Mail, we know about the secret imprisonment last year of 50-year-old Wanda Maddocks by the Court of Protection. Police had arrested her at the care home of her 80-year-old father John after she'd tried to remove him because she thought his life was in danger. He'd lost four stone, was suffering from severe dehydration and his kidneys were beginning to fail. Now we were planning a similar abduction. We had seen how much our mother had deteriorated over just one night. We were not risking another. I rang my father and told him we needed a getaway driver. Once we knew he was in position, we got my mother dressed then set off. "Don't take my arm," said my mother, "I am walking out of here on my own." We passed the nurses" station. "Heads down as usual," remarked my mother under her breath. We had made it into the lift when there was a shout. "It's that male nurse," said my mother, stabbing lift buttons in her panic. Like a scene from a movie, he thrust his arm towards us before the doors closed on him. On the ground floor, my mother glanced around anxiously. "He'll come after us," she said. Then she spotted my father. Although he is nearly 90 and unsteady on his feet, he looked very dashing waiting for us. My mother burst into tears. "I have never seen her do that before," announced my father. As they made their slow escape down the steps, I checked at the reception that the bill had been paid. In marked contrast to the response of the nursing staff, the accounts department proved speedy and efficient: you get a premium service when it comes to the payment process. The bill amounted to several thousand pounds for a two-night stay and medical treatment. Outside my mother had collapsed into the car and my father in his excitement overshot out on to a busy road. We had done it. Back at home my mother was immediately in better spirits and made a speedy recovery, "Thank goodness you girls got me out," she said repeatedly. We are not alone in being less than happy with our experience of a private hospital. In August the Competition Commission published an in-depth investigation into the £5 billion private healthcare market. Its findings were damning. One in eight Britons now holds private health insurance and 80 per cent of all private health care is funded by insurance policies. But the Commission found that lack of competition is driving up prices and resulting in poor care for patients. The industry is dominated by five providers - HCA, BMI, Spire, Ramsay and Nuffield. The Commission accused them of charging people more than they should - to the tune of between £173m and £193m a year, and the Commission says this is a "conservative estimate." The Commission has said that consumers need more information on private hospitals in order to make an informed choice. But when I asked one private GP how he chose a private hospital for his patients, he admitted it is down to the consultant to pick - while a consultant told me that choice is often made by nothing more than geography. It gets worse. Sometimes consultants pick private hospitals because they are bribed with smart offices, secretaries and even cash bonuses. And as profits in private healthcare tumble, as they have in this period of economic uncertainty, there is a danger that poor care will become more widespread. BMI, for example, has said that in order to cope with its financial problems, it is introducing "volume-enhancing and cost-saving initiatives." How that might affect patient care became clear last June when a Care Quality Commission report on BMI's Mount Alvernia Hopital in Surrey identified serious failings on patient consent, care, cleanliness and staffing levels. Staff told inspectors problems had come about because of initiatives designed to "save money" or for "logistical and financial reasons." My mother is back to her old self. But for me the lack of empathy displayed by her mainly young carers was eye-opening. To the nurses, she became a non-person the moment she was admitted and it nearly killed her. After we complained, the hospital investigated and invited us to a meeting with the CEO, the consultant and the head matron. The first two apologised, but the matron said she was satisfied that my mother's care had been "safe." When my sister asked about care and compassion, she looked blankly at us, as if we were talking a foreign language. Human error happens, but poor nursing is now endemic in our hospitals - NHS and private.