"in general nurses & care givers ..."

What I liked

in general nurses & care givers try best. As in anything some were really great & others lesser so.

What could be improved

Kind of follows on from feedback I have just read on this site.

My Mum was taken into CCU on a Thursday back in July & whilst nurses good, was very hectic & my sister could hear a couple of younger doctors discussing at 10.30 that night if should send Mum home or keep her in. Thankfully kept in & went to what ever the transfer unit is overnight whilst tried to find bed. She transfered to ward Friday which means no senior Dr saw her till Monday as would appaer Dr's don't work weekends. Advised thought she might of suffered a TIA but did not get a scan done till Wednesday, which confirmed had suffered a bleed. So it took 6 days to get the scan done.

After a variety of ongoing minor incidents some 3 weeks later she started to get some Physio & as making progress moved her down to another ward for elderly where appeared more patients, less nurses & less room. Also Mum appeared to be fading away & discussion with sister re feeding basically lead to if "they" dont eat then nothing she can do, so guess means OK to starve "them". We then believe Mum was attempting to get to bathroom & had a fall just before lunch. We were advised of fall & was going to get X Ray as Mum complaining of hip pain. She went for X ray that night during visiting so about 7.30 pm. Called next morning about 8am to check what X Ray showed & nobody had even bothered to actually check X Ray !! so suggested it got done pretty quick. Got call back to advise all OK & no break. Then went to visit in afternoon only to find that somebody else had checked & now told Mum did have broken hip. 24hrs to find out broken hip. Hence was due for surgery "1st thing" in the morning. Callled in morning for update & found not even goner down for prep. After many calls & visits to keep pushing issue eventually Mum went down about 8pm instead of 8 am. So 60 hrs with bust hip. Would like to think is seen as not acceptable.

Anything else?

When visiting can never get clear update or info, why keep 3 files, 1 at bed, 1 nurses & 1 Dr's. Needless to say impossible to keep them all updated to same standard & why even try. Just have the one by bed & let everybody use same one. It really does appaer to be that simple. It is also absolutely impossible to get anything to happen over a weekend. It's like everything goes on pause, unfortunately people are sick 7 days a week & visitors want to visit & get updates 7 days a week. Many people can only vist at weekends which must be terriable as no chance of any meaningful updates or discussion as nobody in that knows the case.

On a Saturday my sister having repeatedly had Dr paged was aadvised at 11.50 would be with her in 10 mins. She had to leave at 1.00 without the Dr appearing. Hence she left a note for the Dr but when she returned for evenning visit at 8.00 the note had even been touch so jsut totally ignored.

Why not let visiting take place over lunchtime, visitors could actually help feed the people they are visiting. Certainly appaered Mum not eating much as people not always got time to help feed her. So let the nurses keep nursing & where possible let visitor s help share the load. I know your leaflet say's don't want vistors around to distract whilst giving out meds, but this is already a very common occurence as many evenings drugs are being given out through visiting time so total shoots down that point. Mum is still in hospital some 11 weeks after went in, so I think it probably did warrant her being admitted back then.