"Poor Communication"

Initial surgery and treatment of 12-year old son was excellent. Soft-tissue injury to the knee.

Communication surrounding discharge was appalling. Safeguarding issues at the time with court orders in place. The assumption was that because I am the father, I had less of a say in discharge arrangements including conversations in private between the nurse and the mother, before trying to persuade me in front of my son to vary the previously agreed discharge arrangements.

This conversation should have been held between me, the nurse, the physio and my son's mother - not in front of a 12 year old who had already dealt with issues from an ongoing divorce. Not to mention that social services had previously removed my son from his mother and I had paperwork stating that as protective parent, I was to take actions to protect him from previously unsafe behaviour.

The immediate assumption of the nurse was that because the mother and I wanted different things around the discharge, that she automatically had my son's best interests in mind and I did not. Something which, with a short private conversation with me and a cursory look at the paperwork, could have been resolved.

Please do not make assumptions based on the gender of a parent when separated parents have conflicting views. Please also have relevent difficult conversations out of earshot of a minor, so that the child can ultimately be presented with the agreed-upon best-interest decision, rather than having to become involved in parental conflict (which I had spent 3 years attempting to minimise as much as possible).

Letter sent to Bramble Unit in December 2022 and seemingly ignored.