"Our baby daughter was born 12 ..."

What I liked

Our baby daughter was born 12 weeks premature at 714g (1lb 10oz) and the fantastic care from Barnet clearly saved her and my wife's life.

The care and dedication from all the nurses, doctors, cleaning staff, porters, midwifes, pharmacy staff, administrators, etc is humbling and we don't have words to express our gratitude.

The Starlight Ward is truly fantastic - I believe that they don't have quite the same facilities as UCH for complications but they can still clearly deal with very young and extreme low birth weight babies (they have had twins surviving from 23 weeks). And perhaps this is a better environment than UCH for your premie baby if you anticipate anything less than than the most complicated situation, as Barnet is a smaller ward and the staff have the chance to know and love each baby on a more personal level. Cleanliness in Starlight is absolutely faultless under Jo Wong.

Rooming in for parents before taking their babies home is a fantastic idea.

Our baby was also treated at Treasure Island and A&E for a brief overnight stay. A&E were fantastic in admitting her and getting her on oxygen before I had returned from parking the car. And she was looked after very well and competently in Treasure Island.

What could be improved

Edgware Hospital (where the scanning for babies born in Barnet) could do with scanners which monitors the blood flow across placentas similar to those at UCH.

There should be a regular check rota on the sterilising hand lotion for patients / visitors on Treasure Island Ward as on one occasion I found that the three bottles which I passed to enter the ward were empty.

The gents toilets in the entrance lobby to the hospital need to be cleaned more thoroughly. I noticed a small excrement stain in a cubical which was there for nearly two months, until I found a cleaner to get it removed.

More privacy for mothers recovering on the Maternity Ward as my wife has to share a room with another new mother who had clearly had an easy birth and had her family around her congratulating her late into the night and she was phoning up her friends / relatives when my wife was in a very poor state.

Car parking during the day is a real problem (I missed the birth whilst driving around the car park for the tenth time looking for a spot)

Bus connections to the hospital are poor and the location of the bus stops outside of the ones immediately by the hospital is not obvious. Better maps / signs would help.

Need bigger and more signs on the entrance to the main hospital as to where A&E entrance is to be found and that there is no entrance through the main hospital. I know that there are signs but patients going to A&E are in a panic and will miss these signs.

Anything else?

We used and experienced many wards in the hospital: A&E, Starlight, Treasure Island, High Dependency / Intensive Care, Matenity Delivery Suite, Unity, Victoria, and the Optical Clinic.

Not all runs perfectly, and there were some less than perfect experiences over the many months of experience that we had with this hospital. However this is only to be expected with the literally hundreds of people who were involved in the care, complex organisation of a medium size hospital and the complexity of modern treatments which miraculously saves lives. And these moments were few compared with a background of truly superb care. Our experience of Barnet is that is a good hospital.