"My experience at Barnsley DGH"

I was rushed into A&E in excruciating pain with biliary colic. They called in a member of the surgical team whose opening line was, "so you've got a bit of a tummy ache?" I am not five years old! Up on the ward, nobody showed me the controls for the bed position or bed light. It took me most of one day to work them out. The ward cleaners were hopeless. They only made random swipes with the mop and the ladies loo floor was decorated with blood stained tissue for over 24hours.

There is also a very long gap from dinner at 6pm to breakfast at 9.30am, especially when my first day dinner option was a dry sandwich. It would be very helpful if patients were provided with a ward timetable on arrival, giving approximate times for tea trolley/meals/drug rounds and consultant rounds. It's difficult to plan, for example, a shower if you're afraid of missing one of these.

The operation was scheduled for six weeks later, cancelled the day before and then reset for another week. The post-op pain relief and delivery of my normal medication was haphazard. I reacted badly to anaesthetic and had to stay another three days. One nurse was very brusque when asked for a co-codamol, even though I had been given additional pain relief and told not to get up. No information was given to me about my post-op expectations, except to say a District nurse would visit, which she did not.