POLITCIANS yesterday called for an inquiry after an 88-year-old pensioner was left lying on a hospital floor for four hours because staff were not allowed to move him.
Mitchell Cabel, a retired builder, was injured when he fell from a chair while a patient at Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen. He was wrapped in blankets, given drugs and left on the cold floor of a ward while hospital staff waited for paramedics.
His son and wife arrived at the hospital to find Mr Cable moaning in agony.
He died two weeks later as a result of kidney and heart failure.
Yesterday, as NHS Grampian issued an apology and announced that a review was already under way, MSPs joined the family in calling for an inquiry into Mr Cabel's ordeal.
The dead man's son, Mitch, explained that his father had been admitted to Woodend four weeks before his fall on 25 April to be treated for a urinary infection.
He and his mother Elsie, 84, arrived at the hospital to visit his father to find him lying on the floor beside his bed, wrapped in a silver insulating blanket and wearing an oxygen mask. Mr Cabel had been given morphine to ease his pain while hospital staff waited for paramedics to lift him and take him for an X-ray for a suspected fractured hip.
Mr Cabel said: "I was shocked at the way my father was being treated and annoyed because he had been left lying on a cold floor because the staff couldn't lift him.
"The doctor had made repeated calls to the ambulance service, stressing the importance of my father's situation, but nothing seemed to work.
