"Lack of toilets"

Mum was also on Ward 2 at the Western General Hospital. She had to share one toilet and one shower with 7 other patients, both of which were not fit for purpose. Both were extremely small making it impossible to access with an attached iv drip stand and syringe drivers. Trying to help mum to use both was very difficult. There were also silverfish in the shower and we even saw one scuttling across the ward!

On top of this, one patient had been given a laxative which meant the toilet was in constant use over one day meaning other patients either had to use a bedpan or exhaust themselves trying to get to a toilet half way down the ward.

These patients are among the sickest and deserve better hygiene facilities. This is just one aspect of what has been a difficult experience of patient care at the Royal Infirmary and the Western over the past 3 years. What with misdiagnosis, conflicting advice, poor communication and having to fight for treatments, one major one which we had to find out about and organise ourselves. Heaven help you if you have cancer and fall under these hospitals care, because apart from the nurses and an occasional doctor whom were mainly excellent, no-one else will i feel!

I further suggest anyone who gets admitted to an oncology ward, to record communications with doctors, note what medications you are getting, their dose and times received. Also note dates and times of all further investigations (scans, X-rays, bloods etc) taken and their results. We met a couple of patients doing this due to mistakes that had been made.