Disgusting hospital

[Furyfurious]

I was discharged from hospital this week following surgery and a 5 night stay at an NHS hospital. I am absolutely traumatised. What I have seen and been exposed to was totally shocking. I will definitely be looking for a Private health care policy. The Nurses attitudes, patients attitudes poor (not all ) but a shambles. The smell of the ward, the food etc sorry but there needs to be resolution

Name change for this.

DH was on regular in hospital treatment, one would expect the staff to be great and certainly most people's expectation of the staff in these units are high (angels!). Our experience has been awful and there has been many complaints over things that have happened and I will tell you about "takeawaygate"

DH in for treatment in the evening. Nurses do what they have to then dissappear to the nurses station for their "team meeting" where they are supposedly talking about the patients. There is much noise and discussions about things like holidays, TV programmes and what clothes have been purchased etc. This night there is a loud discussion about ordering in food (this was during covid), various suggestions put forward but the consensus is to contact a place known to offer freebies and good discount to nurses. One nurse goes off to make the call, comes back and announces with glee that the takeaway is free because she laid it on thick about how they were so busy that they hadn't been able to eat and could it be delivered to the unit back door. She then walked into the treatment area and announced that dinner was "on me". When the food arrived all the staff pulled chairs into the treatment area and unpacked the food in front of the patients and proceeded to eat there. One walked around shoving food trays at the patients asking if they wanted any. It was very strongly scented food and DH couldn't handle it so requested his treatment stopped and left the unit. For context he was having terrible issues with nausea and vomiting and had weight loss from 84 to 60 KG. Also evenings were generally in dim lighting and quiet time, one particular nurse never did this and always kept lights on and was very noisy with lots of shouted (private) conversations with other staff across the room and into other rooms. We complained and DH was treated like a pariah and ended up having to go to another treatment unit because this incident broke the relationship down with the nurses completely.

That was just one example of many (including one physical assault), DH ended up on anxiety medication, had a suicide attempt and relapse of PTSD. He probably had a terrible reputation as a difficult patient, and I'm sure he was because his trust in the people who were to care for him was destroyed and at times he became very hostile. He was also very anxious and withdrawn and this obviously caused issues at home too. I am very glad that his treatment is finished now and we even moved house so we would never have to go back there for aftercare or relapse.

it depends,
one of the hca's was so lovely to me,
wheeling me out for a vape

I must have been very lucky, but I couldn’t fault the care I received several months ago - blue-lighted to hospital by ambulance with pneumonia (followed immediately by pleurisy) and a heart rate in the stratosphere.
I was in for 3 weeks, and am still profoundly grateful to them all.
The sole member of staff who wasn’t very kind and pleasant was a snippy little HCA that very first night, but that was it.

OP, please talk to PALS (or email them). And that goes to anyone who is a patient. Let them know any good things, any bad things and also feedback on what might make things better. I work on a very acute and busy ward and I would want to know if a patient had the experiences that you were having so that I could report, escalate and get things sorted for you. I want to know that the patients on my ward are cared for properly, and feel safe, comfortable (as far as they can be!) and secure. It's a scary environment and the patients we have are some of the sickest outside of ITU. We don't always get the time we would like to spend with each patient, but we do our best for them.

I always get so shocked and upset when I hear about poor experiences (like the ones I hear on here). I also know that different wards can vary so much (and not just in their speciality). I don't know how to fix it. I know that on our ward, our team is well trained, very supportive of each other, very good with new starters. The additional training needed for our ward is robust. There isn't a hierarchy where the HCAs are running about non stop whilst the nurses/Sisters sit in offices. We all roll our sleeves up and get stuck in. The ward team is not just doctors and nurses, but everyone (domestics, catering staff, HCPs, porters). We had a huge number of staff leave during and after the lockdowns (and I didn't blame any of them), but we fought and fought to get more staff, and increased numbers on the ward to make things better and safer for patients. I think that is reflected in the lovely feedback we get from patients and their families.

Perhaps that is the way forward, having really good teams of people working together. I've been sent to struggling wards in the past for several weeks to help them and give management an idea of what was going wrong and it seems to be the same thing: poor staffing, high staff turnover and people worn out and losing motivation because of that.

i remember one of the nurses telling me they only had one commode for a whole ward,
makes you realise

I had to go to John Radcliffes women’s centre last summer. I felt I was in a private health clinic. it was absolutely fabulous, kind staff and very ’patient cantered’ care. The Horton in Banbury has to outsource some of its care to the Foscote hospital, which is pleasant, but not a patch on JR women’s centre.
The care you receive definitely depends upon the hospital you have to visit.

Yes!

I understand the reluctance to name hospitals but t might be helpful if people indicated the county to see if a pattern emerges.

Whether it's a good experience or bad, how many people leave a note on Care Opinion? A number of trusts respond and some of them do take actions.

https://www.careopinion.org.uk/

95 yr old mil was kept in an a&e hallway for 3 days. Food was left beside her but she can't feed herself, an elderly relative tried to feed her and she aspirated food so is now being treated for pneumonia. Nursing staff made it clear that they wouldn't be feeding her as they didn't have time.

My mum had to stay in hospital recently. There were lots of elderly women on her ward, some with bad dementia. The night staff were recording the dementia patients shouting for help and playing it back, screeching with laughter all night (one of the non dementia patients went out to see what was going on, so witnessed it all) I wish I was lying but this is the level of disgusting behaviour going on.

It's sad and disheartening, that even contacting PALS doesn't work.

If it did, we wouldn't continue to have th we events.

I live in a developing nation and our health service is fabulous.

Let's hope it gets sanitised between uses....😱

I’ve spent some time in and out of hospital. The attitude of the nursing staff was uniformly awful.

the one commode? @jenpil

dont you find that appalling?
all the ladies ringing their bells needing the commode and they only had one!

Op are you able to elaborate on what happened apart from nurses laughing and talking loudly and somebody smelling of faeces?

It’s so variable. My mum had two weeks in recently and it was amazing. The care of much more vulnerable patients was exceptional. The nurses were very kind and very skilled.

I sat on a chair in A&E for 19 hours waiting for a CT brain scan. No one spoke to me, apart from initial doctor, no food or drink was offered either. I had the scan then was told I'd have to wait until next day for results. I was taken to a ward with some old ladies, this was fine. Except they decided to move me 10 minutes later to a ward with 5 men in the bays. One next to me clearly had mental health issues and would not stop asking me why I was there and asking very personal questions. A nurse came over to do my obs and I burst into tears, told her I didn't feel safe and she said nothing, sighed and pulled the curtains around me. She just left me sobbing and no one came near me again all night. He still carried on through the curtains, it was just awful. I'm still not convinced mixed bays are acceptable.

gosh, no, i had to go to a mixed bay, it was awful and unexpected

My friend is in a private hospital atm and the care has been dreadful. No joined up thinking or planning at all. Nice room, but that is about all.

Private hospital in the UK is fine for really straight forward, simple procedures and out patient consultations. Most are not geared up for any kind of complication or emergency and they will stick you in an ambulance and send you to the nearest NHS facility if anything goes wrong.

I'm a nurse - I worked 20 plus years in hospitals before community work, which I've been doing 12 years. I was also traumatised by a A/E visit 2 years ago - neglected and bullied by a nurse practitioner, who also lied to my family. She didn't know I was a nurse. The ward staff were lovely, but they did give me someone else's iv antibiotics, which I stopped and reported - but they did not follow the drug error procedures. I was too unwell to persue this. I will do anything to avoid A/E in the future, and dread having to visit hospital wards to see relatives etc. I hope my vulnerable mother eventually dies peacefully at her nursing home - thevstaff are kind and caring despite being very short staffed.I have been back to the hospital since, for day surgery, and investigationsI, and my care wss excellent in those departments. I feel like a traitor posting this, but that's how it was for me. Traumatising.

Many thanks!

I think there are a multiplicity of issues here, often only Private Eye details the appalling mismanagement of monies supposedly going to improve the NHS but finding their way into the hands of companies owned by ‘party donors’. Consequently there is a huge infrastructural problem within the Department of Health. How many ministers have there been in the past 14 years? It is woefully short of qualified staff. Brexit has made the position much worse. No organisation and especially one so dependent on staff can function without the right numbers of the properly qualified. It is also saddled with debt because of the disastrous PFI ‘initiative’. The juicy bits of the health service have been sold off to private care providers. We have an ageing population and falling living standards so the demands on the ‘public end’ of the service are immense. We have local authorities who are required by law to care for the elderly and have been defunded by central government since 2009, so our hospitals are full to the brim of people with mental and physical care needs who should be somewhere other than a hospital, but have nowhere to go. Remember Andrew Lansley [now Baron Lansley] and his ‘reforms’, the Health and Social Care Act 2012, the ‘decentralisation and marketisation’ of the NHS? Well it’s all come to pass. People need to acquaint themselves with government policy and the ethos of Britain Unchained. We are moving to a USA style private health care system. We are not moving towards a Spanish or French style system. Every day there is some article in the paper about the failings of the NHS and the ‘I’m going private’ comments. Check out what it is going to cost you to have cover for cancer care, and stroke management treatment or a treatment for a chronic disabling condition such as Parkinson’s or neonatal care for a newborn, because this will be a private tax you will have to pay if things go the way of the States…..but then everyone who voted for these things knows that don't they?

How did you vote? Hope you're not responsible for this situation by voting for over a decade of austerity.

I am a retired nurse,always dreaded needing to be an in-patient.Earlier this year I was admitted as an Emergency via A and E,the care I got was outstanding during my entire stay.

I don’t know anyone who has had a bad experience at this hospital.It is the small local hospital in Staffordshire.

My Dad was admitted to a ward in our county hospital last September. I was shocked at how filthy it was, 8 patients to a bathroom and if someone had an accident, it was just left. There was blood and excrement on the floors/walls. They shut the ward twice in a week - Covid outbreak followed by C Diff infection. As soon as Dad got his tests done and a diagnosis, we discharged him ourselves... with liver cancer, he frankly deserved better. He made us promise that whatever happened he'd never go in there again, and boy we kept that for him.

Just remember that while you're booking yourself in to a shiny BUPA hospital that if you have an issue under anaesthetic, they rarely have ITU facilities and you will end up in an ambulance while they shift you into A & E for them to pick the pieces up. If you're lucky enough to survive the trip. DH nearly didn't.