Hi carol, I had DS at GRH 3 weeks ago. I was admitted for pre-eclampsia on the Monday evening, given hormone pessaries to induce labour on the Tuesday & given the hormone drip which led to fetal distress & an EMCS on the Wednesday so my experiences may be somewhat different. However, here it goes:
The triage midwives / ob's are a mixed bunch, some are absolutely lovely & really reassure you that they are keeping an eye on you & LO. They can sometimes be a bit slow & a bit lax though - I was left in a waiting room for 3hrs with pre-eclampsia & my BP was not checked once. Another lady there had not felt her LO move all day & was left unchecked for 2hrs, I felt they could have sent a midwife out to at least check her with a doppler, poor love!
The maternity ward staff again are a mixed bunch, some have an ability to make you feel so unwelcome & like you are being such a pain - when they started the hormone pessaries DS was back to back so I was in absolute agony & felt awkward every time I requested painkillers due to the rolled eyes I got!
The staff in the consultant-led delivery suite were absolutely fantastic, I had one-to-one care with an amazing midwife called Dee, she could not do enough to make sure I was comfortable & remained calm when things started going wrong. My anaethetist, "Dr Ash", was brilliant, he talked me through the epidural & why they felt they had to do one - to lower my bp, he was so reassuring. The ob's consultant I saw when DS started getting into distress was again brilliant, reassured me & explained exactly what their new plan was - stop the drip, monitor DS for an hour & if the trace was normal restart the drip very slowly, if DS was still in distress / got into distress again they would perform EMCS. DS was fine for the hour monitoring but got into distress again soon after they restarted the drip, 5 minutes later I was on the operating table. "Dr Ash" was fab, reassured me through the whole op, even when I lost a lot of blood.
After my EMCS, I was put on the maternity ward once again where the staff were, again, a mixed bunch. Some made you feel like a pain for asking for pain relief - I was in agony. The support I got with bf'ing was laughable, the midwife I asked 3 times to help me get DS latched properly simply said "yeah, do that" & walked off, didn't once check DS's latch or positioning.etc :( I ended up in floods of tears & eventually a HCA helped me get him latched. I felt like the shoddy help I received may have been because I was the only one in the ward of 4 who was bf'ing, the others were ff'ing so only needed a bottle bringing to them. :(
Like I said, my circ's were quite traumatic so it may not be a true reflection of GRH, but I hope this helps!