HUNDREDS of patients have gone missing from Glasgow's hospitals in the last four years, the Sunday Herald can reveal.
More than 800 cases of runaway patients - including two from Yorkhill children's hospital - have been recorded by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde since 2010.
The figures obtained exclusively by the Sunday Herald show the majority of the 856 cases are from wards that treat people with mental illness.
The highest number of runaways per location, 276, was from the city's Dykebar hospital, while a further 236 were from Leverndale hospital in Crookston.
There have also been two cases, both in 2010, of children disappearing from Yorkhill hospital - one from the facility's in-patient ward, and another from the Schiehallion unit that treats children with blood disorders and cancer.
The number of cases has dropped substantially in the last four years, with 226 reported in 2010 falling to 101 in 2014.
However, Dr Jean Turner, former director of the Scottish Patients Association, said she was "absolutely astonished" by the figures, adding that they raised concerns about patient safety.
Turner said: "People are usually in a hospital, whether it is for mental illness or not, for their own good and their own safety. It is extremely worrying that staff just don't know where they have gone.
"If you are an in-patient you are the responsibility of the hospital, and your family would assume you were safe and sound there.
"If somebody has a mental illness, or even patients who have dementia, they might find themselves outside and don't know where they are - they've gone through a door and it could be dark, or they could go out and it becomes dark and everything takes on a different connotation."
However, health bosses said that in the majority of cases patients return to their wards themselves or are returned by police, and stressed patients with mental illness would more commonly be a danger to themselves if they left hospital.
Turner stressed the importance of informing relatives, who would assume their family member was safe in hospital.
"There is always that element of worry for the family and I hope the hospitals are extremely worried that they have lost patients," Turner said.
"Certainly, patients' families should be notified immediately when the patient is no longer in the ward ... it's a shocking statistic and I think family members would like to know more of the detail when they think their family member is safely in hospital and they're actually out wandering."
The length of time for which each patient was missing was not provided by the health board.
Colin McCormack, head of mental health at Gartnavel, said every patient who went missing from that hospital was assessed individually and the risks were weighed up before action was taken.
"In legal terms, [patients] have exactly the same rights as you and I," McCormack explained. "They are ill, but they are free to come and go on legal terms. In practical terms it is slightly different."
McCormack said that in every situation, a risk assessment is carried out and a decision on whether to alert the police is taken by staff, who often know patients' habits and have an idea of where they may have gone.
He added that patients are "almost always a risk to themselves, not other people - a risk because they don't know what they are doing or because they might intend to harm themselves or kill themselves - very commonly a risk because they've not been thinking and they've come out with the wrong clothes, it's winter and they're wearing a T-shirt or they won't have their medication on them".
McCormack said levels of observation and security would be much higher if there were suspicions the patient might self-harm.
"Do we lose patients frequently? No," he said. "Does it happen, has it happened? It has happened in this hospital, that somebody has literally left the ward and ended their life. Yes, it has happened."
He said relatives are informed as soon as possible when a patient absconds as they re usually the first port of call when trying to trace the missing person.
Although the majority of disappearances are from wards that treat people with mental illnesses, other cases included three from the Southern General's spinal injury ward, one from Lightburn hospital, which treats the elderly, 25 from the Western Infirmary and 23 from Glasgow Royal Infirmary.
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