Confused and in pain, 80-year-old Doris McKeown is kept in a hospital cupboard while she awaits emergency surgery.
The pensioner was stored away for 48 hours in a tiny windowless room, with only shelves of hospital supplies for company.
On the door outside was a sign saying ‘Dignity in Care’.
But inside the store cupboard – called a ‘treatment room’ by management but a ‘broom cupboard’ by Mrs McKeown – she suffered the indignity of being overlooked for medication and meals.
She was taken to Norfolk and Norwich Hospital last October needing an urgent operation for compression of the nerves in her spine, which can lead to paralysis.
The mother of two said: ‘It was a relief to be in hospital as I knew it was a serious condition, but in the middle of the night I was transferred to a storeroom off the main ward because they hadn’t got enough beds. It was like a broom cupboard.’