More work for MoH nurses as families abandon elderly in public hospitals

JOHOR BARU – Last year, in a written parliamentary reply, then women, family and community development minister Datuk Seri Rina Harun announced that 2,144 elderly patients were abandoned in public hospitals from 2018 to 2022, increasing the workload of public healthcare professionals.

Speaking to The Vibes, Shima (not her real name), a former registered nurse in Kuala Lumpur Hospital’s respiratory department said she encounters at least two cases a month of elderly and sick patients left abandoned. 

With no one to rely on to bring them home, she says hospitals are forced to refer patients to the Social Welfare Department once treatment is complete. 

“There was this one elderly male patient I had who was lucid but too weak to move. 

“His wife had passed and he had one son who was married and apparently spent all his money on his wife. When the father was hospitalised, he just left him there.  

“The patient didn’t seem too bitter and just told me he thought his son was stupid. He didn’t seem like someone who would raise a bad son,” Shima said when contacted. 

However, not all patients are lucid enough to put a stoic front in the face of abandonment, she said, pointing out some individuals are usually too old or sick to react to their situation. 

On the flipside, Shima says some patients who come in are already estranged from their families and do not expect anyone to come for them. 

“I remember one case where a patient came to our nurses’ counter and told us to only call her if her father is dead. 

“Here, it looked like she didn’t have a good relationship with her father. Who knows what her father had done before,” Shima said.

Extra work for nurses

Anis (also not her real name), who served in the neurology department of the same hospital, highlighted that cases of abandonment usually occur more frequently in major hospitals than smaller ones. 

However, she emphasised that patients who are abandoned are not limited to the elderly, but include those infected with HIV, as well as foreign patients without proper documentation. 

“In some situations, the patients have families. But in cases where the patient is infected with HIV, for example, it wouldn’t be surprising for the family to not want to take them, saying that the patient was a bad person,” Anis told The Vibes. 

Further, given that beds are in short supply, pressure is on the nurses to find care for these patients after their treatment is complete. 

This includes contacting police stations located nearest to where the patient lives to find their families. 

“Police are sometimes able to locate the family, but it is not always that they come to pick the patient up. 

“Similarly, with illegal immigrants, we have to make contact with the embassy and their employers too.

“If we don’t do these things to release the patients from the ward, we get an earful from our supervisors because we need the beds,” Anis said. 

Better social services needed for elderly

Meanwhile, senior consultant paediatrician Datuk Dr Amar-Singh H.S.S. cautioned against using the term “abandoned” when discussing the matter, pointing out that families at times may not have the resources to care for the sick and elderly. 

Some disabilities, according to Dr Amar, require full-time care that may be beyond the financial abilities of some families to provide. 

This, he said, can be attributed to the limited social services and support related to elderly care in Malaysia. 

“The problems are compounded by the fact that our social services and support for the elderly is limited in Malaysia.

We have not developed adequate quality, aged-care facilities with government support,” Dr Amar said.

Dr Amar said Malaysia could look to nations with proper social and elderly care initiatives to remedy the situation. 

He added that healthcare professionals need to explore one’s financial, physical, and psychological burdens as well as one’s ability to receive a chronically unwell elderly patient at home. 

“Some post-discharge home care support systems (nursing care) need to be developed.

“Planning the discharge together with the family will increase the success of returning home,” Dr Amar added. – The Vibes, January 23, 2023