"I was a patient for 4 weeks on ..."

What I liked

I was a patient for 4 weeks on B3 and have to say the nursing and ancillary staff were superb, they were always polite and friendly even when they were obviously overworked. The ward was always clean and tidy mostly due to the nurse and her great work.

What could be improved

Meal choices are limited and the quality was not always as good as it could have been (burnt potatos a couple of times), however whenever I added a request for salt on my menu the catering team always added it.

The no smoking rule!

Anything else?

When the new way of serving breakfast came into being there were, understandably, some teething problems namely wholemeal bread having run out and toast being cold when it got to bay 5. But once again after adding feedback to the next days menu and passing it onto the people serving these problems were soon remedied.

The no smoking rule is absurd and anyone looking at the pavements all around the hospital will see that it is obviously not being adhered too as the paths are disgusting! The security staff were on occassion very rude and twice told me they would not swipe me back into the hospital after 10pm because I should not have been smoking anyway, even though on one of those times I was actually on the phone to the USA to my daughter as I could not get a signal within the hospital! I had to get someone on the other side of the doors to let me back into the hospital. If you have been a smoker for any length of time then you cannot just stop because of a sign on the wall and a bus stop like smoking shelter out of the way of the main doors would solve this and the mess left everywhere, patients on the mental health ward are allowed to smoke as are prisoners so why not all the patients? After all other hospitals accept that they cannot stop patient smoking and provide somewhere out of the way for patients, visitors after all are only there for a max of 2hrs and can manage during that time.