catheterized without permision

[cecil39]

a relative in her sixties was taken to A and E recently with a pneumonia, there, against her wishes she had a catheter put in before being taken to a ward, there seemed to be no reason for this as she has no bladder weakness and no problem walking to the loo, she spent three miserable days begging to have the thing removed, each person she asked refered her to someone else, she felt ill as it was but to have this added undignified stress was unbearable for her, the Dr who discharged her said "why on eath did they put this in you" (as did several nurses) and ordered it removed at once, is this something that happens often? has anyone else had this done unnecasssarily?

[tinkerbell23]

They mabye wanted to monitor how much fluid she was offloading or infact retaining......but not sure......

Where im from theyre tightening up on cathater use ...if its not needed...straight out..x

[bednobs]

no, i have not. When you say it was "against her wishes" i wonder how that could be? To have a catheter inseted you have to lie with your legs open as wide as possible. Unless there were people there holding her legs open or holding her down, she gave implied consent (IMO)
If that happened, she needs to be calling the police, or at the very very least using the NHS complaints procedure

[rowanwitch]

If her blood pressure was very low they would need to monitor her urine output to be able to react quickly to the first signs of loss of kidney function due to poor perfusion. They also may have felt she was too ill to risk the exertion of getting out of bed to use a commode or struggling with a bed pan. Sounds like a failure in information giving and it should have been removed as soon as she was responding to treatment

[bednobs]

also, in older people with pneumonia, there is often some confusion. perhaps this is why she thought she had refused?

[rowanwitch]

Or she hadn't understood it would stay in... I would love to have seen her obs charts bet that would make it clearer

[tinkerbell23]

Have to agree with bednobs..its a pretty intimate procedure....

Not alot want them in...but implied consent would be removing bottoms, getting into position for the procedure xx

[cecil39]

she was very ill and really had no fight in her but she says she definitelly said she did'nt want it in, but they insisted it was for the best, but once on the ward no one could understand why it was done, thanks for your replies, i will encourage her to complain, but she is the sort who "dont want to be any trouble" bless her.

[bednobs]

it sounds very much like she didn't "want" it in - who would? but that she gave consent when by allowing them to do the procedure.

[rowanwitch]

I think the problem was more that it was left in once it was no longer needed.. When I've been really ill and that includes a bout of pneumonia I asked the nurses to catheterise me as it was more dignified than having them support me on the bedpan or commode... and a whole lot safer