...to be doubting my hospital already?

[pandora69]

I had my first baby 2 and a half years ago at a large teaching hospital, starting off in their midwife-led unit and being transferred to the medical maternity wing for an emergency caesarean. I felt it was all dealt with abysmally, but looking back in more detail it became apparent that there were small incompetencies right from the start. Eg losing my blood samples, giving me times to come into a walk-in clinic for a routine check-up that were not the times that the clinic was open, sending me letters with not just an incorrectly spelt name, but a name that only had 2 of the same letters my name had in. The birth on the day, as I said, was an em CS but once I was opened up it became clear they were going to have to call in a more senior doctor from home, meanwhile I was open on an operating table with a junior doctor holding my bowel in, exposing me to infection, and eventually the spinal block wore off - but before the other doctor got there! A mess from start to finish.

So this time I have decided to go to the other hospital in the area. I live too far away from either hospital to be happy with a home VBAC attempt. I have registered with an independent midwife for pre- and post-natal care, and to come to hospital with me as a birthing partner (although I am aware she will not be acting as the main midwife. This will be the hospital midwife on the day.) She asked if I wished to see one of the hospital consultants, and I said I may as well, for a second opinion, so she has referred me to one who is pro-VBAC.

Today I received my appointment letter. It is littered with spelling and grammatical mistakes, including misspelling the name of the clinic itself and being unable to spell 'ante-natal' - here spelt as 'ante-natel.' There are at least a dozen mistakes in the letter.

AIBU to be wary already before I have even been in? Surely a standard 'here is your appointment time' letter is printed off many times a day and someone should have noticed the glaring errors? It suggests to me that either noone at all has noticed, or they have and don't care. It might only be a letter, but I believe that all these little things add up to a greater whole. Ie if you have a department which is happy with or unable to spot lots of little mistakes, bigger ones will happen. Maybe I'm just being daft, but I have an alarm bell ringing.

Hi Pandora. You poor woman - your first birth sounds completely mishandled and you must have been very scared.
If there are no other hospitals in the area, then this second is your only other choice. However, just because the letters contain huge mistakes, doesn't mean that they will be as incompetant as the previous hospital. To make yourself feel more at ease, perhaps you could ring the clinic manager and mention the letters. You could word it like 'Hi, I received this letter.....and I was just checking that the clinic name is correct etc - that way they won't take offence.' That way, they can explain and apologise for the mistake and you'll get a good/bad feeling. I'm sure it'll just be someone new on the desk or something.
For my first DD, one of my 5, yes 5 midwives, was a complete dragon and I was sitting in the birth pool crying my eyes out but that is not the first thing I think about when telling someone about my birth. I tell them how nice the fruit crumble was and how the midwives would take the babies into the nursery for us at night and rock them to sleep. Not everything needs to be the same to be effective. I think you'll be understandably worried this time when you had such a traumatic birth previously. Have you asked friends who have had babies at this 2nd hospital what it's like?

And remember, you'll have you IM there as your advocate this time. Sounds like you are doing what you cant to mitigate the situation scaring you again.

Have the appointment letters from the hospital been outsourced abroad? That may account for the spelling errors.

Blimey Aged - do that really do that?

I've no idea if they were outsourced. They were posted in Basingstoke, though .

did you ever go to the hospital pandora? were they ok in the end?

Our hospital outsource the writing of appointment letters and all that kind of thing.

Anyway, it is never the consultant who writes the letters, so spelling errors will have very little bearing on the level of medical care. Spelling errors committed by admin doesn't have to mean an unhappy department: they might have been perpetrated by a perfectly happy and efficient, but mildly dyslexic, secretary.

I am sorry to say that a great many communications from my university in recent years have been full of spelling and grammatical errors. This does not mean that the teaching is awful, it simply means that these letters are not proofread by the people in charge of the teaching. The same happens at ds' school: again, it is not the teachers who write the weekly newsletter.

I would have been strongly tempted to return the letter to the most senior person I could find at the hospital, with all the errors corrected in red pen, and a mark out of 10 on it - and copy it to the head of maternity services and as many other people as I could think of. This is totally unacceptable.

Is it Basingstoke you're going to then Pandora?

I've had two very good births at the North Hants hospital. Bad aftercare when I had problems a few days after my second, but I have to say both actual births were handled very well, with caring midwives both times.

I think your idea of taking a private midwife is a very good one. If nothing else, it will probably keep the NHS ones on their toes a bit more.

Oh, sorry - just realised this is a very old thread!