"Chesterfield Gynaecology"

While the anaesthetist and theatre staff were very friendly and made you feel at ease my post op stay left a lot to be desired. A few hours after I came round from my anaesthetic I told the nurse I really needed to go to the toilet, the nurse said they couldn’t let me stand up yet (fair enough) but when I said I really needed to go they pulled a face and rolled their eyes and said ‘well do you want me to get you a bed pan then?’. Uh yes please. I wasn’t given anything to clean myself up with (sorry for the detail) and had to lie there in my bed, unclean for the next few hours. Any time I asked a nurse for something they would go off and not come back. I kept asking to be discharged but was told I needed to eat and drink something first (again fair enough) but wasn’t brought anything for another couple of hours, so I gave up and asked one of the cleaners who kindly bought me some toast and a bit of water. I then kept asking nurse after nurse for more water and to be discharged. Nothing materialised. By this point all the other patients had long gone home. One nurse did then look at my notes and seeing that the Consultant had hardly filled them in, they couldn’t tell if biopsies had been taken (so had to go away and find out – another long wait) and there was no follow up plan post procedure. Even they looked at them and said ‘well this is half a job isn’t it? Let me see if I can discharge you but we need your medication signing off’. Off they went and didn’t return. Then I overheard 2 nurses saying everyone on the ward had been discharged. They didn’t even know I was still in the bed!! Losing the will to live I got dressed and said ‘hello! I’m here!’. ‘Oh sorry, we thought you had gone!’ was the reply! It then took another 2 hours of asking nurses to get some paracetamol signed off so I could go home! In the end I called my husband to come and pick me up and began walking out. At which point a nurse said ‘don’t go without your paracetamol’.

Having worked in a hospital for many, many years and stayed in a couple of times, I have never had an experience like this.

It has then taken more than five weeks to get my biopsy results back instead of the two I was told. I was informed by the secretaries that they are a month behind on typing, but it doesn’t help that each time I called I got told my letter had been typed that day and posted when clearly it hadn’t as it never arrived.

As much as I support the NHS I am now going private – perhaps if I pay I may get a half decent service?!