"Medical 1 - Admin/managenent 0"

Although the actual medical care by both nurses and doctors is excellent, Southmead hospital fails with its general administration and management skills.

Trying to communicate with an actual ward is sometimes impossible or at best extremely frustrating.

You can ring the Ward direct but more times than not, the phone remains unanswered, something we have witnessed while actually visiting a ward.

[The automated phone exchange fails miserably]

On occasion when you actually manage to get put through to the ward, you are either put on hold until you lose the will, and put the phone back down [10mins is more than long enough to wait without reply!!] or receive a two word reply - please hold, and end up with the same result ... [10mins and longer if you have the will power].

General management skill can be dreadful, just organising a wheel chair can be challenging, especially when you have warned the help desk that an appointment will be missed if a chair or member of staff cannot be found to take the patient to a particular department. We personally experienced this issue, which resulted in an extra night in hospital, and blocking a precious bed, because a scheduled review in another part of the building was missed, due to this issue.

I would ask that whoever is responsible for the general management of internal administration, take a long hard look at one's self and then review the internal mayhem that seems to ensue and be a constant threat of to the hospitals professional running.

I could list several other issues, but I think you can get the jest of my complaint/review