Adult Social Care Glossary, v 0.6

Words that blame: ‘Bed blockers’.

Such a hideous, dehumanising term applied to people who are ‘medically optimised’ and no longer meet the ‘criteria to reside’ but can’t be discharged from hospital for any number of reasons – usually nothing to do with the needs and wishes of the person, and everything to do with failures in communication and coordination in the wider ‘system’.

This is the language of widgets and processes and targets and flow, not of compassion and humanity.