I don't know if anyone in the last hospital my mother was in could have done anything to lengthen her life, but they could have made her last few days pleasanter.
In the hospital where she was last Oct-Nov she wasn't diagnosed with dementia, in the first ward she was feverish and her strange behaviour could easily have been due to delirium and dehydration. In the other wards she put on a very good performance, (and delighted in performing), so you had to know her well to see how much she'd changed.
I pointed out to a nurse when she had wrapped her pills up in tissue and put them in the rubbish bag, after that they put the pills in her mouth instead of just leaving them with her, I don't know if she held them in her mouth and then spat them out later as so many do. I wasn't so concerned with making her take them (she had a right to refuse), but with making sure that they knew what she was taking, and that any refusal should be a clear informed choice.
Some nurses (and some other staff too) were very good with her and I did wonder if they'd had relations with dementia. However there was no continuity of care as she was moved around 4 different wards.
Hospital staff should realise that next-of-kin don't necessarily live just round the corner, and that not living near doesn't mean not caring. It is just lucky if a relative is able and willing to go and stay with the patient, short- or long-term, not something that can be taken for granted. Very few of us have the sort of relatives who can be treated as unpaid servants.
If two or more relatives are visiting the patient, and representing different versions, doctors and nurses etc. shouldn't assume that they can judge the situation after only a few minutes' conversation.
One of the other patients had a care review in the ward before being discharged, and that should be offered generally.
It was obviously no use asking my mother if she'd seen a Social Worker, or what did the OT say etc. When you're in hospital lots of professionals come along and say "I'm ... and I'm a ..." afterwards it is very difficult for anyone, even without dementia, to remember who they all were.
The doctors' mental tests aren't much use. The fact that someone knows the name of the prime minister, can spell some words backwards, count backwards from 100 etc. doesn't necessarily mean that that person is able to look after herself alone in her own home.
The OT told me they only needed some measurements (bed, toilet etc.) and then she'd be sent home with an "Intermediate Care Team" for the first 6 weeks. I did the measurements, took digital photos, then found she'd been sent to a different ward with a different OT, no explanation.
It wasn't much use the nutritionist lecturing me, as I pointed out whatever I bought and prepared for my mother, she was the one who had to eat it, I couldn't force-feed her. Her malnutrition wasn't due to a shortage of food in the house.
One person said one thing and another another, no consistency, that is where a care review would have been useful, if there are differences of opinion about care, (and there probably always are), it'd be more useful to have them out in the open, otherwise you just don't know whom to trust.
The OT in the third ward seemed to think that my mother's discharge depended mainly on us obtaining a "dossett" box, not realising at that stage that my mother wasn't going to be able to use one.
After many phone calls the Intermediate Care Team never appeared, in fact most of the people I spoke to had never heard of such a thing, and no-one seemed to be able to contact the OT who'd originally suggested it. At that stage, just after discharge, people at the hospital said it was up to her GP and social services, whereas the people at the surgery said it was up to the hospital, etc.