A DISABLED man has attacked the “disgusting” care he received in a Worcestershire hospital which he says has left him bedridden.

Mark Smith, aged 39, of Wellington Close, off St Paul’s Street, Worcester, said the damning report by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) into standards of care at the Alexandra Hospital, Redditch, came as no surprise.

The report said nutrition was a “major” problem at the Alex and raised “moderate” concerns about privacy and dignity issues, including the “condescending” and “disinterested” attitude of some staff.

A member of clinical staff described having to prescribe water on medicine charts to ensure patients got enough to drink. Food trays were left out of reach and patients were forced to eat with their fingers because no one helped them cut up their food.

Mr Smith, who has spina bifida and hydrocephalus, has no use of his legs but used to get around using a wheelchair and valued his independence before he was admitted to the Alex.

He was admitted to ward 18 on Monday, April 18, for a relatively routine operation to remove stones from his bladder but he left five days later with a black pressure sore which has left him unable even to use his wheelchair for more than 30 minutes at a time.

Mr Smith said: “It wasn’t until I came out that my mum noticed the sore on my left-hip was black. It was now a full blown pressure sore. Specialist nurses have advised me I can only go out for half an hour. I left hospital in a worse condition than I came in. I never want to go back to hospital.

“At the beginning of the year I had a cricket membership at New Road. Now I can’t get to the cricket. I feel I have been robbed of my independence.”

Mr Smith has been told he will recover but that it will not be “a quick fix”.

His mum, Lynette Titley, 60, said: “When he was in hospital they never said a word about the sore. When I took the plaster off it was black and it smelled terrible. What’s happened has made us all frightened. He should have had a proper mattress when he went in. It’s disgusting.”

She said he now needed extra help catheterising himself and could not get out of bed.

Mrs Titley has also had to rely on friends to care for her son as she also works as a kitchen assistant.

She added: “When he was in the operating theatre staff weren’t very sympathetic. The operation was suppoded to last an hour but it took four and the nurses said, ‘We don’t know anything ourselves’.”

His dad Dennis Smith, 59, said said the high standard of district nursing care his son has received was in stark contrast to the poor care he got in the Alex.