"Awful experience"

Anything else?

Ever since I was first referred to MRI I have had nothing but trouble with them. I have struggled with pain for many months as a result of the unhelpfulness of the staff and poor management at this hospital and it is totally unacceptable. Whenever I visit my specialist, I am made to feel as if I am nothing more than a set of test results, with the goal of treatment being to try to make the results normal rather than making me feel better. It is as if the agony and discomfort I faced everyday did not matter when the results were normal. Whenever I told my doctor that I was in severe pain, I was simply told to “take paracetamol”. When I told them that I did take paracetamol every day, and that I often also needed to take over-the-counter co-codamol, there was no further advice other than to avoid co-codamol. No reason was given for this. In addition to this, nothing was given to help control the other symptoms of my illness. Eventually, I managed to find over-the- counter medicines that were useful, but I was told to stop taking them. Finally, I went to my GP to get the drugs that helped and never told my specialist that I was taking them. When I was admitted to AM3 for a week over Easer, the care given was appalling. On the first day of being admitted, I was not seen by a doctor until 1AM, who gave me incorrect information, causing me unnecessary distress. In addition, it felt nearly impossible to get any pain relief. The situation was so bad that I had to persuade a visitor to bring paracetamol in every time they saw me. When the pain was too severe to be controlled with paracetamol alone, I had great difficulty convincing the staff to give me stronger painkillers. As if to make matter worse, when I was finally given a scan after a week, it turned out that I didn’t need to be in hospital in the first place! I was so angry at having needlessly spent the Easter holidays in hospital. As well as all this, MRI has ridiculously long waiting times. I waited 4 months for a follow up appointment that was supposed to come after several weeks of the initial appointment, and I am also waiting 5 months for a follow up of an appointment that was supposed to come six weeks after an operation I had, as well as waiting over 6 months for a scan which I have not been given an appointment for. As the standard of care given at MRI is so poor, it is best to avoid them at all costs. This hospital desperately needs to improve immediately and I am dreading having anything more to do with them in the present state. I now plan on stopping attending any appointments and trying to cope with the pain as the consultants are no help whatsoever. I wish that I had never been to Manchester Royal Infirmary.