"The nursing staff were very helpful ..."

What I liked

The nursing staff were very helpful and caring.

What could be improved

I was told that I needed a chest x-ray and this would be done before I was discharged.

I waited for 2 days for an x-ray. The nurses phoned the x-ray section to chase it up but nothing happened. In the end I was discharged at about 7.00pm without the required x-ray and told to visit my GP and get an outpatients appointment from the GP and return as an outpatient as “it would be quicker”. This is not very good as I then had to get an appointment to see my doctor and then come back and wait in x-ray outpatients for about an hour.The chest x-ray that I finally had via the GP showed a very bad chest infection. She said that had I had the x-ray at the time it was ordered at the hospital it would have shown pneumonia. I’m still recovering from that.

Anything else?

I was in a lot of pain through the night of Saturday 15th Aug. and was in contact with West Call out of hours service. They told me to come in to them at 08.30am Sun 16th. After seeing a Doctor there at about 09.00am she tried to get me admitted straight to the hospital but there was no room and I had to go through A & E.

I did not get onto the assessment ward until the afternoon and was put onto a ward about 4.00pm. I was told that nothing would happen until the team had looked at me on Monday. On Monday they said that they would take me down to the theatre and I would probably have a camera put in through my tummy button to see what was wrong. I had a perforated appendix. The doctor came to see me after the operation and over 3 days told me it was a nasty appendix, it had turned gangrenous and my tummy was full of pus!! I asked how long had the appendix been perforated and said about 2 or 3 days!! Why did I have to wait until Monday – do we have a 9 to 5 Monday to Friday health service? On discharge from the hospital I had a letter I gave this to my GP it did not say any of this but just that I had had an appendicitis.

I said that I was very sick with Anaesthetics but was told something would be put out for me. TABLETS were prescribed which of course I could not keep down. The Doctor was too busy to prescribe anything else so I was left for 5 hours until something else could be given to me as it had to be the same doctor no one else could alter the prescription. That is not funny when one is reaching all the time and has just had a stomach operation.