Patient Patients

I have just been into hospital to have my Gall Bladder removed. I took a cancellation, so it was all a bit rushed. However allowing for that, I'm not very impressed with the service that was delivered from the patients point of view. Before I tell you why, I must say that I do think that the medical staff do want to do a good job for their patients. I just think that they are unable to put themselves in the position of being receivers of "care". They are prisoners of their own routines.

The problems started once I was in the ward after the op. I was in a bed, separated from the rest of the patients by drawn curtains. Not a problem unless you need to communicate, and certainly good for privacy & rest. However no one gave me the call button & I didn't know where it was & couldn't have reached it even if I had known. So when I was in quite a lot of pain, not from the surgery, but from my underlying conditions, I had to wait for a nurse to come in to the side ward & shout for pain relief. By then it was quite bad. I was also very thirsty & didn't know that there was a plastic cup of water on the cupboard next to the bed because I couldn't see the cupboard due to the raised head of the bed. I wasn't given a jug of water until the next day when I was more mobile.

I didn't seem to be able to switch the light on using the call button & I was in a corner of the ward which was quite dark.

I wasn't offered a cup of tea, biscuit or piece of toast on the day of the surgery, which was at 1pm. So I didn't have anything other than the water till breakfast the next morning. A full 24 hours.

No one told me how the surgery had gone. I don't know how many stones or how big. I don't know whether there were any complications due to my heart condition. I presume not as I am here. I never saw a doctor after the surgery, not even to discharge me. No one asked me how I was feeling or whether I wanted anything. They did come very regularly to do routine obs though.

No one told me whether I could get out of bed to go to the toilet, or where it was. Fortunately I didn't need to go till the following morning & then I asked. So I also didn't have access to my bag which was next to the bed on the floor. That meant I couldn't get my mobile & let my daughter know I was OK. As it happens I was completely wiped out by the anasthetic & didn't really surface properly till sometime in the night. I presume it was the night, because I also couldn't get to my watch.

When my daughter tried to ring the hospital on the evening of the op because she hadn't heard from me & was worried, she had a dreadful experience. She was told I wasn't in the hospital. Then she was told I was in the heart rescusitation unit, which really worried her as I do have a pacemaker. Eventually her husband rang & did find out where I was & that I was OK.

My daughter collected me the day after surgery. The sineage for the unit I was in was so bad that she couldn't find it. By the time she did find me she was very upset  because of the lack of help she had received & the general stress. The last time she had been in a hospital was when her father died 2 years ago.

No discharge protocols seemed to be in place. A nurse gave me two lots of pain killers. I later discovered that they were both similar to drugs I am already taking. So I ended up taking a double dose of a NASAID before I realised. No one replaced my dressings or checked the wounds. Apparently I remove my own dressings after 5 days & go to my GP if there are any problems. I wasn't given any printed information until I asked about driving & swimming. The first nurse said she would find out & never returned. The second one gave me a leaflet about anasthetics but nothing about the do's & don'ts of gall bladder surgery.

Fortunately I have a friend who works for Royal Berks Hospital so have copies of all their patient leaflets which are very informative & patient friendly. I'm also capable of finding information on the internet.

If the NHS is to provide a good service for patients I think they should ask the patients themselves in each hospital department. Either they could fill in a questionnaire or they could write a summary of any areas they think could be improved. Why isn't there a service quality assessment from the people who matter? This isn't the first time this has happened to me. I had broadly similar experiences in 2010 when I went into the same hospital with a suspected heart attack.