Hannah Rodger reports a fall in the number of patients "absconding" from Glasgow hospitals (Revealed:
the 800 runaway Glasgow hospital patients, News, December 21). Surely this is a good thing. So why quote Dr Jean Turner's astonishment at the figures?
Almost all patients in general or psychiatric hospitals are there on a voluntary basis. Hospitals are not prisons. Clinical staff have a hard enough time without yet more flak for things outwith their control.
It is not difficult to leave a ward when staff are preoccupied with other patients. As a six-year-old in the 1960s, I spent eight weeks in isolation in an infectious diseases hospital and repeatedly gave the staff the slip to go for a stroll in the grounds. Then they nailed my window shut, even though I had walked out by the door.
I trained in psychiatric and general hospital nursing and became a ward sister. I still work as a senior nurse in general practice.
Helen Edmunds
Dollar
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