"My 84 year old mum becoming ill and being taken to Hospital"

Mum was feeling unwell and had slight right sided weakness, I phoned the emergency services and an ambulance with a paramedics Vanessa and Vicky attended to her at home. They were efficient, calm and very kind to mum, thanks very much.

We went to Pinderfields Wakefield and spent the evening in A/E where the staff there were great. She was admitted to AAU that night and we visited the next day. Firstly it took me 4 phone calls and a long time to get through to different areas to get to know where she was, staff said they did not get her records transferred from the paramedics although it all went onto the computer in the ambulance with my contact details.

Once on the ward I asked a nurse at a desk what was happening, she did not look up at me when I said "excuse me" she just retorted "yes? " This I found extremely rude.

Mum was in four days and no one made any effort to speak to me about what was happening, I asked to speak to someone on discharge in the discharge lounge and the reply was that I may have to wait a couple of hours to speak to anyone! A passing doctor on the ward whilst attending to another patient put his head around a curtain and said mum had evidence of old TIA's but I couldn't get the information I needed to be able to support fully.

It wasn't till discharge that we were told she would have a carer service for a few weeks, again no explanation of what this consisted of was given as the discharge nurse only deals with discharge and nothing else, didn't have any information (her words )! On discharge staff told me there was no NOK on the records so they had difficulty contacting me! I gave these details in the ambulance and if not on the records why didn't someone ask when I was visiting?

These issues made the experience more stressful than necessary and could have been simply dealt with if good communication with family were taken into consideration.