"Not much"

What I liked

Not much

What could be improved

I was on Kingfisher ward with pancreatitis. It was awful, very understaffed, unbelievably noisy. We always had to wait for hours for attention (I waited for 18 hrs to have a painful non functioning drip removed after the Dr said I could have it taken out). The nights were the worst, no staff meant that painkilling injections had to wait until the whole ward had been done, usually after midnight. Lights were never turned off until after 1am and went back on at 6am. After several nights of this and being woken by shouting patients I was in tears from exhaustion.

I was supposed to be on a low fat diet but there were rarely suitable options from the general menu (I wasn't offered anything else). Picking just the boiled veggies because no one knew whether the food was low fat was not fun. There should be a special diet option (what do diabetics do there?)

Anything else?

The elderly lady opposite me was not eating much because she needed help sitting up and reaching the food. She was usually left unsupervised and after an hour of the food sitting on her table, the housekeepers took it away. She was painfully thin and needed encouragement and help, which she rarely got. Other ladies in my bay were left shouting in pain sometimes for 1-2 hours (usually when night staff were doing the medications) but were repeatedly told to wait their turn. There should be more twilight nurses at this time to cope in a busy period I used to be a nurse and the general standards of care on this ward were dreadful. Its not the staff that were there, its managers not ensuring staffing levels are high enough!