The list that went the other way

Aisha Farouk left hospital with eleven medicines, four of them new, and a printed sheet she describes as perfectly clear and completely useless.

The list grows because every appointment can add and almost none are structured to remove. Nobody is at fault; the mechanism simply only runs one way.

Eleven medicines, seven of them intended

Home assessment finds things clinic assessment cannot: the rug, the third step, the light switch at the wrong end of the hall, the chair that is four inches too low.

The list only ever grows because only one direction has a process attached to it.

Samuel Reyes, clinical pharmacy

Discharge, and the fortnight after

The fortnight after discharge is where things come apart, and the interventions that help are unglamorous: a phone call, a medicines check, one visit.

“At my age you’re told to expect more,” she says. “Nobody suggested it could go the other way.”