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"Labour Ward great / Maternity Ward terrible"

About: Royal Derby Hospital

This would be a 5 star review if I was only reviewing Labour Ward. Both times they have been great, the ward is nice and when my boys were born extremely early after a spontaneous labour, the midwife who delivered them was the only person who actually said "congratulations" - yes it was a shock they were so early but this little detail meant a lot. It all fell apart once I was moved to Maternity Ward. I was left alone, I knew I had to express milk for my boys (in NICU) and rang the buzzer for the first time at 10.40am to request my cannula was removed and to ask for some bottles to express into. The health assistant who came said they would get a midwife. I rang several times before the midwife bothered to show up at 3pm. They were incompetant, unprofessional and had an attitude problem. They were in no way sympathetic to the fact I was separated from my babies, they hurriedly wrote in my notes whilst talking to me, they stayed a maximum of two minutes then just disappeared and I had to wait a further hour before a student eventually brought me some milk bottles and took my cannula out. This was 5 hours after I'd first made the request. I appreciate the cannula cannot be removed straight away but they weren't even monitoring me. If something had happened to me no one would have found me for hours. A neonatal doctor came to see me and said I was more than welcome to go down to see the boys, all I had to do was ask someone on maternity to take me - I pointed out no one was even prepared to fetch me a couple of bottles so they certainly wouldn't be prepared to take me down to NICU. In the end I asked to leave - no one even acknowledged me as I walked out. One of my boys died the next day. The boys were extremely early and medically very fragile, and maternity would have known this. I was left feeling like maternity ward robbed me of precious time I could have spent with my son. I also discovered after his death that he had been ready for my milk "when available" - by delaying the provision of bottles maternity ward took away the one thing I could have done for him during his lifetime. They also let me walk out without important medication that I needed - we had to go back to maternity after his death to get it, and had to sit watching a cleaner being filmed singing "baby love" up and down to corridor before we were allowed out of the ward. Our baby had died an hour before. We were disrespected and the ward failed on several of the hospital's values. A midwife on the ward directly us to the bereavement midwife for support - we had to chase them with several phone calls and visits before finally meeting them almost a week after his death. They decided it was a good idea to take me into a room with an empty moses basket. I was very upset by this. I made a formal complaint. During the meeting about this the head of maternity told me that in terms of support other dead babies are more important than my dead baby. Go somewhere else.

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Responses

Response from Royal Derby Hospital 8 years ago
Royal Derby Hospital
Submitted on 03/07/2015 at 17:37
Published on nhs.uk on 04/07/2015 at 02:30


Firstly please accept our sincere condolences to you and your family at this very difficult time. Thank you for taking the time to provide us with your feedback. Listening to our patients views is very important to us as and allows us the opportunity to make changes and improve things for our patients in the future. Your experience and concerns have been escalated to our Chief Nurse who would like an opportunity to discuss this further with you. Patient Experience Team at Derby Teaching Hospitals NHS

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