"The welcome, the genuine care ..."

What I liked The welcome, the genuine care and compassion of the nurses, the resources available to the child cancer ward. Generally a feeling of being well looked after. I appreciated greatly the PALS service. Parking was reasonable too !!! What could be improved? Communication between nurses and doctors was very poor. Doctors' communication with patients was almost non-existent. Generally very dissatisfied with the involvement of doctors/consultants. Typical arrogance is to be expected, but when coupled with laziness it is very unsettling. The structure of the haematology and oncology teams was never explained to us. We had SHOs coming in actiing as if they owned the building. We had On Call Paed Consultants who just didnt want to know. On one occasion it took 23 hours of persistent badgering every 2 hours to get a visit from a doctor. The only way I could get cross team cooperation was to go to PALS. The doctors at Addenbrookes DO NOT CARE, they behave as if they have No one to answer to. Governance is DEFINITELY NON-EXISTANT. Anything else? I'm currently considering moving our treatment to another children's cancer hospital due to the shameful way in which the ward manager behaved with us, and also due to the incredible arrogance of the doctors and consultants. All the Medical team are constantly defending each other. The nurses are mostly excellent, however the head nurse (ward manager) is an incompassionate, overbearing and dictatorial failure as a manager.