"Generally excellent"

I was admitted to the spinal ward over a weekend at around 1am and while the care from the Nurses was excellent, the on-call Drs I saw during the rounds tended to speak over my head, as though I wasn't there. That said, I was sent for an emergency MRI the very morning I arrived and investigations into my condition began immediately and very thoroughly. When tests came back clear, again Drs would talk over my head to inform me that in their specialty field I was fine, really with attitudes that said "you don't need to be here, please go home and stop wasting our time", However, I cannot stress how fantastic the Nurses were during those first two days whilst I was in pain and very scared. Nothing was too much trouble and despite how fast things moved and changed on the ward, you felt like you had their entire attention and would not move on until you were happier.

I was then moved onto a larger, more general ward (I think the other one might have been an acute type ward) and again, the standard of care off the Nurses was second to none. Each member of staff would address you by your preferred name and would introduce themselves and tell you what their role was in your care before doing anything else. Despite the ward being incredibly busy, there was never a sense of rushing to get things done or to move on to other patients, they talked with you, treated you like an actual person which was wonderful and very clearly explained anything you didn't understand. The Dr who I was assigned to over the week was incredible. I expected them to be very similar to the others I had seen but in fact they spent time getting to know me, sat with me and explained things over and over and over until I understood and would even come back during visiting hours, to re explain to my family what they had said to me, so to keep us all updated. The doctor's standard of care was fantastic and I will be writing to the hospital and to thank the doctor for all they did.

Referrals to Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists, Psychiatrists and other services were processed incredibly fast and in the same way as the Drs and Nurses, communication was excellent.

Sadly, the only thing that really let the hospital down was the way my discharge was handled. I wasn't officially told that I would be discharged until about 2 hours before I was and only really picked up on it when my Dr made a comment that I would be discharged on Monday. At this point it was Friday so I began to let people know.

Later on I overheard another comment that in fact it was more likely to be Sunday evening, and then it changed again to be Saturday morning- all within roughly 8 hours. Suddenly I had my family panicking about making sure home was ready for me to arrive with crutches etc but still we had had no confirmation off anyone. In fact it was only when my family arrived at the hospital on the Saturday morning to pick me up that they were officially informed!

On the whole, excellent, just a few lets downs.