"I was mde to feel like an inconvenience during my miscarriage "

When I started to bleed on Saturday 8th December 007, I immediately contacted my out of hours GP. About two hours later I had an appointment with a Dr at Knowle who said I should go to the hospital the next day for scan. She gave me a form and told me to go between 10.00am and 12.00am. This was the best bit of service I was given. I arrived at the hospital at 9.45am the next day ready to be scanned. I asked a nurse where to go for reception she said just pick up a number from over there. She did not ask me my name and I picked up number three. I was third to arrive. I believe there should have been a reception to greet patients but there was no such thing. I was seen at 11.30am when the nurse took my name and to my surprise she informed me that I should not be there. I gave her the form the GP had given me. She said it was not good enough and that she should have had a fax. She made me feel like an inconvenience and acted as though the hospital was doing me a favor seeing me at all.

Given the circumstances this was very unkind. She had also recorded my date of arrival as much later. I had to repeat my basic details over and over again which wasted a lot of time and stressed me out. When I arrived at hospital I was bleeding brown blood and when I left it was red. It seems the nurse was not considerate enough to remember that pregnant women should not get stressed! She only saw me for 10minutes but I had waited for over two hours to be seen. It just makes no sense. The doctor and the assistant scanning me were both very junior and sent me away saying that my chances were 50/50. I think they should have been more experienced. They saw a heartbeat but they did not give me a picture of the scan. I would have really liked something to keep. They were thoughtless not to offer it. Furthermore, I was last to be seen that day as I was put to the back of the queue of 8 people and did not leave till 4pm. The nurse told me I could not have lunch otherwise my appointment would be missed.

Due to my mistreatment, when I got excruciating contractions I did not go back to the hospital. The experience would have been bad anyway but the nurse and her manager need to be trained and informed on how to treat people with more respect. I think junior doctors should not be left alone on miscarriage wards. The nurse made me upset at a time when I needed to be treated with respect.