Ex-ERI chief’s wife attacks care on dementia ward

THE wife of a former manager of the ERI has condemned the NHS after a dementia ward which was caring for him made serious blunders.

Sandy Watt, 78, is now a dementia patient in an elderly care ward at Findlay House in the city’s Seafield Street.

But while he was there staff made serious mistakes with his drugs and issued a “Do Not Resuscitate” order without his wife Kathleen’s consent.

A report has found the hospital failed to look after him properly.

Mrs Watt said: “It just makes me sick. It is not the NHS I knew.”

His treatment was so poor, the official inquiry by Scotland’s NHS watchdog described it as a ‘significant injustice’. By the end of his career, Mr Watt was general manager of the Royal Infirmary. But the investigation by the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman found “significant failings” in his own care.

Mrs Watt, a former nurse and NHS Complaints manager, said his case revealed declining NHS standards, and said: “In Sandy’s day, he wouldn’t have allowed it to happen.

“He would have had the staff out of there. I find it desperately sad that 
people in his position are treated this way. As a former NHS professional myself, I just can’t believe this 
happens.”

Mr Watt retired in 1992 at 55 because he disagreed with the plan to build a new ERI using a private finance initiative.

It emerged staff had stopped his antidepressant medication for three weeks, ‘a significant error’ according to the Ombudsman. Staff also failed to give him his drugs and medicines properly. He also suffered a number of falls. NHS Lothian offered its sincere apologies and said it would be making improvements.