"The whole thing was neglectful and uncaring"

My friend had, had surgery, paid for by the NHS in the Nuffield Hospital Leeds. I arrived and asked where the ward was and was told to just go up to the 2nd floor and find the room number.

No one greeted me, or even saw me enter my friends room at 11. 45, she was eating her lunch, following her surgery. I sat with her a while, she had had her op in the morning and had arrived back in the ward at just after 10am, following a general anaesthetic.

I noticed that no one came to the room at all for over 3 hours, the door was shut, she had a buzzer, but was left all that time with no one checking on her, including being left to make the first trip to the loo on her own. Eventually some time after 3pm the physio came to give her instructions and an hour or so later the sister on the ward arrived and told me to dress my friend and get her ready to be discharged... without any reference to my friend to find out if that was acceptable! After all, I'm not a relative, in fact I am a work colleague and had to get my friend almost naked to help as she was only wearing a gown and was in a complicated sling.

I am physically disabled myself and this was all very tricky, but being polite and not wanting to delay my friends discharge I complied after checking with her that it was ok. The Sister had made it plain that she was far too busy.

The whole thing was neglectful and uncaring. Although nothing dreadful happened, there was so much that could have gone wrong and I felt the NHS had let us down again by using a sub standard service. Finally I had to tell the Sister to remove the catheter tube from my friends hand before she could leave as she had clearly forgotten.