A GREAT-GRANDFATHER has called for improvement at the Horton General Hospital after a traumatic stay in which he described it as 'the worst place I have ever been'.

Jerrold 'Joe' Darby, 79, was taken by ambulance to the Banbury hospital on Wednesday, October 19 after suffering a minor heart attack.

Following a week on blood-thinning medication on the hospital's acute Laburnum Ward, the Bicester resident said his nerves had been shattered by the experience.

He said: "What the staff do in the time they have is unbelievable. But the place was havoc. The ward I was in was the worst place I have ever been.

"One man was not in the correct bed; he had had an accident and could not speak properly, and kept pulling himself down the side of the bed.

"He did it all day and night. One one or two occasions I tried to calm him down, stroking him. It was pitiful.

"Another chap had dementia. One night they hadn't put the screen around properly and the poor old boy was there naked, being washed.

"The hospital was so full. There was no space for anybody to go. At night the noise of the patients, through no fault of their own due to illness, was absolutely atrocious."

Following a visit to the John Radcliffe Hospital for a heart inspection Mr Darby returned to the Horton to be told by a surgeon to 'get as much rest as possible'.

But he said he was unable to sleep due to constant noise, and on one occasion ran out of the ward in the middle of the night and was calmed down by nurses.

He said: "I broke down. I said I wanted quiet and the sister said my nurse would take me back to bed; there wasn't anywhere else to go.

"It is under-staffed. On my last night the nurse was rushing up and down on her own. She was kind enough to give me sleeping pills."

On being discharged a week later Mr Derby said: "It was horrendous. That place, from the first night until I left, built up so much that I'm amazed I managed to stay there.

"I promised the nurses I would highlight the problems. They do wonderful things in the face of cutbacks.

"In my opinion the un-elected Prime Minister, and Jeremy Hunt, who is not really interested, should spend a night in that hospital. They wouldn't stay five minutes."

Figures published yesterday revealed that hospital admissions across the UK have hit a record high, with patients aged 65 to 69 making up the largest group of patients.

Unusually Oxfordshire has bucked the national trend, with a total of 199,059 admitted to county hospitals during 2015/16 - down from 222,948 the year before - but individual data for the Horton was not available from NHS Digital.

Services at the Horton are likely to see sweeping change enacted next year as the first part of a transformation plan for NHS services in the county is put out for consultation.

Catherine Stoddart, chief nurse at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: "While any complaint is a sign that we have not provided the best possible care for a patient and is therefore disappointing, it gives us an opportunity to improve our services.

"For that reason, we actively encourage people to give us their feedback, positive and negative, and we pass all feedback onto our services so that they can improve."