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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Worst behaviour you’ve encountered in hospital ward

221 replies

Ithinkthatsenough · 13/04/2018 18:56

I am probably being U and touchy in posting this as ive just spent the day in hospital having a late d&c...
on ward with 2 other ladies who were chatty, was fine and bearable this morning, after 1/2 hohri knew all about their admissions and problems, children’s schooling, then had to put my headphones in when they started on bowel movements.
I was having an op, cleary due to care, questions asked, they could hear eveyrthinf tooand quite a distressing one

OP posts:
Flightywoman · 15/04/2018 00:23

When I was miscarrying I was told I was possibly ectopic and then stuck in a side room with a drip for hours.

No one came to check. I was terrified.

About 3-4 hours later a houseman stuck her head round the door and apologised for not getting to me but that they were really busy on the labour ward. Obviously I didn't matter because my baby was dead. And I still thought I was ectopic.

Eventually I was examined about 5 hours later miscarriage confirmed and I was discharged at 5 in the morning. The advice was non existent, I had a phone number on a scrap of paper torn off something else. No guidance, no information on what to expect, nothing.

I was told I had to phone to cancel my booked 8 week scan. It was at the same hospital.

It was a fucking shabby way to treat me and I'm still clearly very angry about it 11 years later.

Marcipex · 15/04/2018 00:28

yorkshireyummymummy That's dreadful, I'm so sorry Flowers

yorkshireyummymummy · 15/04/2018 00:31

Flighty woman It’s awful isn’t it. Being cross after over a decade and I know that the ‘nurse’ who said that to me won’t have remembered it the next day. But in my dark moments, like on my child’s birthday I seeth with anger at her and at my inability at the time to do anything.

Flowers to you.

yorkshireyummymummy · 15/04/2018 00:32

Marcipex
Thank you. It’s actually helped to write it down .

StUmbrageinSkelt · 15/04/2018 01:14

DS was admitted overnight for an op in the morning. We were alone in a 4 bed bay which was a relief.

About 11pm a young girl who had just had an emergency appendix op was admitted. Her mother and aunt and young brother were with her but the adult women decided the brother was going to stay with her overnight. The ward sister refused so nobody stayed with her. They were on holiday and had a day planned at the theme parks and weren't going to let anything stop that.

I ended up helping her overnight and in the morning as needed, poor wee soul.

HarshingMyMellow · 15/04/2018 01:34

I've just posted on the other thread about the good but I have a few bad too.

One where I fell out feet first of a second story window and was rushed into resus, pumped full of painkillers, neck brace/spinal board the lot. Had an MRI and had apparently come out of it relatively unscathed.
I was discharged the next day with some painkillers because my ankle was in agony and I couldn't put any weight on it whatsoever, but I was assured that there was no type of break. Just a sprain Hmm
The pain kept getting worse, my ankle swelled up to the size of a balloon and turned black with bruising.
A trip to a different hospital revealed I had fractured my ankle in two places.
Complained to the original hospital only to be told that when I was brought in I was only assessed for major injuries and once they were satisfied that I hadn't done anything to my spine/neck, they basically stopped looking.

Another, where I was suffering the most debilitating headaches (couldn't look at light, couldn't move my head, couldn't tolerate sound...) was taken into A and E where they'd done a scan of my brain, only to tell me that I was suffering migraines and dehydration and once I'd had a bag of fluid was sent home.
The next day I got a phone call from the consultant that had looked at my scan and was told to get back to the hospital ASAP as I had a bleed on the brain.
I was readmitted and spent 3 weeks in hospital.

Lemonlady22 · 15/04/2018 01:57

1st night in hospital woke up to find lady in a teeshirt and nothing else looking in my locker, nurse took her back to bed, 2nd night the lady opposite kept trying to get out of bed (hanging off the side) nurses kept shouting her name (she was deaf) which made me jump awake as was the same as mine!...3rd night got moved at 4am to another ward...bedlam... apart from bed 1 an 85 year old lady who was lovely, bed 2 a very large lady with very small nighties, bed 3 thought she was posh and bossed everyone around, a big list of orders for any one who came into the room, bed 4 was completely batshit crazy, caused probs no end, woke up on night 4 to hear/see 4 security men trying to get her back on the bed as she was trying to beat them up (she needed a walker and decided to go home at one am but she couldnt was very abusive...when her husband came the next day the staff told him they thought she was 'confused' as she was behaving strangely, he said ' thats normal for her, she always been a horrible person'...bed 5 never heard a peep out of her all day, but moaned all night....you never see this on TV!

BlurryFace · 15/04/2018 02:17

Midwife whipped open our curtains, and pointed to the woman in the bed opposite me "This is Karen, she's just had a baby who's premature and is in (I can't remember where but s/he was too sick to be with mum)" then introduced me to "Karen" too.

We just kind of looked awkwardly at each other and said hi. It's hard enough keeping a semblance of privacy with only curtains FFS.

yestheyhavethesamedad · 15/04/2018 02:21

Sorry thought of another one ,this wasnt so much worst behaviour as insensitve and ill thought out, i had to have a d and c after mc , i don't remember much from the night of the operation however the following morning 'as i was so out of it due to blood loss ect the night before the doctor that carried out the d and c came to speak to me , i asked her to leave and had a mw tell me i was unreasonable and rude , the reason i asked her to leave was because she was very obviously heavily pregnant and was telling the mw i was her last patient as she was going on maternity leave that day as her baby was due in a couple of weeks .

And looking back now i know i was really unfair to her and now 11 years later look back and wish i had done things differently .

Glassofredandapackofcrisps · 15/04/2018 02:22

I was crying my eyes out after a miscarriage when I was only 20. A nurse who clearly thought I needed to get my shit together informed me loudly that I was only 20 and had years in front of me to have kids!

AgentCooper · 15/04/2018 10:29

All the posters who have been treated so cruelly after losing babies, your posts have made me cry. I am so sorry you were not shown the upmost compassion, which is what you deserved.

MrsMarigold · 15/04/2018 10:30

I'm truly shocked at these awful stories.

ImNotChangingMyUsernameAgain · 15/04/2018 10:45

To the poster who has suggested that going private is the way to avoid bad behaviour in hospitals: I disagree.

I had an EMCS in the private wing of an NHS hospital. My highly paid consultant didn't turn up and left it to the on call NHS consultant to deliver my DC. He then submitted his full bill and years of legal letters ensued as I refused to pay his bill. Obviously I paid all other charges to the hospital, anaesthetist etc.

Following my c-section I was the only patient on the wing. The rest of the maternity unit was very busy so all the staff on the private wing were sent to help out. I was left alone, catheterised and still paralysed from my epidural for hours without anyone coming to check on me. The lights in my room were on, the TV was blaring (not sure why?) and the call button / controls were all out of reach. I ended up having to ring DH at 2am to get him to call the hospital and ask them to send someone to help me.

And my trainers got stolen somewhere between admission and getting to my room after delivery.

My story is no where near as bad as some of the horror stories on this thread but I just wanted to show that going private is not necessarily the answer.

bananafish81 · 15/04/2018 12:36

Echo PP about private medicine. Scroll back and see my miscarriage surgery stories. Both the same Harley St hospital.

Private medical insurance got me a same day ERPC, got me surgeries with my consultant gynae who has treated me throughout all my fertility treatment, and got me the ability to pay for tissue testing of the products of conception (which NHS won't do). My medical care was superb. It didn't get me sympathetic care from nurses or HCAs.

crunchymint · 16/04/2018 13:30

Actually friend with private medical cover who was diagnosed with breast cancer, got an appointment on the NHS earlier than she could privately, with the same consultant she would have seen privately.
Where I live private seems to be quicker for non urgent stuff like knee replacements, but not for things that need to be dealt with urgently.

BumpowderSneezeonAndSnot · 16/04/2018 14:09

NHS does do tissue testing after a miscarriage but only after your 3rd and subsequent ones. I know because I've had it done.

bananafish81 · 16/04/2018 18:24

NHS does do tissue testing after a miscarriage but only after your 3rd and subsequent ones. I know because I've had it done.

Yes. Mine wasn't my third mc, it was my first - so NHS wouldn't have done it for me, and I I wouldn't have been able to pay to have it done. With a private ERPC the insurance covered the hospital and consultant fees, but I paid for the cytogenetic testing.

BumpowderSneezeonAndSnot · 16/04/2018 18:30

The reason they don't do it is 1 or 2 miscarriages are likely to be fluke occurrences and chances are high you'll go on to conceive naturally without issue and carry to term. They only do it as part of investigations into what's going wrong which is a sensible thing to do imo

crunchymint · 16/04/2018 18:33

US privatised medicine is full of unnecessary tests, some of which carry risks.

bananafish81 · 16/04/2018 18:50

The reason they don't do it is 1 or 2 miscarriages are likely to be fluke occurrences and chances are high you'll go on to conceive naturally without issue and carry to term. They only do it as part of investigations into what's going wrong which is a sensible thing to do imo

I understand that. But mine was IVF related and not a natural pregnancy and severe uterine issues were suspected, so diagnostically knowing whether the foetus was euploid or not made a very significant difference to my next IVF cycles. I wasn't ever going to be able to conceive naturally again. Turned out it wasn't a fluke and the baby was genetically normal and I went on to miscarry again with genetically normal embryos from subsequent cycles, and my uterine issues are so severe that I can't carry and will never be able to sustain a pregnancy. So there was very good reason to want to do the testing.

bananafish81 · 16/04/2018 18:53

To clarify, I didn't and wouldn't expect the NHS to have done the testing. But there was good reason to want to pay for it privately, when it would determine the course of £30,000 subsequent fertility treatment

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