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An experience in hospital

Story from nhs.uk

"An experience in hospital"

About: Royal Berkshire Hospital

I had to be rushed into A&E via ambulance. The paramedics were amazing and thought ahead about leaving me in A&E by giving me painkillers just before I entered as they knew I would be in for a long wait. Once in A&E the staff we're friendly and quickly took bloods etc for diagnoses. They moved me until they got the results but this took several hours. I wouldn't have minded but at no time through the wait did anyone come talk/check on me. Luckily my fiancée was with me which meant I had someone to carry me to the toilet when I needed but if I had been on my own there was no one to help. I understand that they're very busy and have a lot of people to treat but they need some way for people to ask for help as everyone is just rushing past and it's impossible to get their attention. Also the few times we managed to get help we kept being told a doctor/surgeon would talk to us 'very soon' so after hours of waiting we assumed we had been forgotten. After 7hrs i was diagnosed and sent to a ward for an op first thing in the morning. My stay on the ward was much better. My only complaint was the staff crossovers never go well (same in A&E) both times I was waiting on antibiotics and painkillers and both times they we're delayed by lack of communication between the staff during shift changes. I only received my medication when I had asked again when I should be getting them. Overall the stay wasn't too bad apart from the bed being broken which they did swap over when I was being operated on. The nurses were friendly and helpful but hardly ever around. There were many times when I had to press the bed alarm for help and waited over 10mins before someone responded. Once I had left the hospital I realised I had no info on aftercare. I had asked the nurse when I could shower and the nurse said after 24hrs. I left it longer and had a shower but got infected wounds as I was unaware that they needed to stay dry as I had disolvable stitches. Overall a very stressful stay could've been eased by better communication from the staff. Even if there was no change in my situation it would have been nice if I had been told instead of being left for hours with no contact from anyone wondering what was going on.

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Responses

Response from Royal Berkshire Hospital 8 years ago
Royal Berkshire Hospital

Submitted on 29/03/2016 at 14:22
Published on nhs.uk on 30/03/2016 at 02:30

Thank you for taking the time to write feedback on NHS Choices about your stay with us. We take all concerns raised very seriously in order to learn from them and to try and prevent them happening again. We are glad you found the staff in A & E to be friendly but apologise that they were too busy to make regular checks on you and keep you updated as to what the plan of your care was.

We expect all staff to communicate regularly with patients about their care so we can only apologise that this did not happen.

The department has been particularly busy recently but the matron for the area will ensure your comments are fed back to the team so we can try and prevent this happening again. We would also like to apologise that once on the ward you were left waiting for antibiotics and painkillers.

Staff handovers are important but we would not like them to infringe upon providing high quality care to all patients.

We are sorry to hear that your wounds got infected because of inadequate after-care advice.

As a Trust we expect all our staff to provide relevant and appropriate advice when patients are discharged.

If you would like to contact us and let us know the name of the ward you were discharged from, we will then be able to feedback your experience to them. Contact our Patient Relations Department on 0118 322 8338 or email talktous@royalberkshire.nhs.uk

We hope you are now recovering well at home.

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