"Resus and AMU, First rate"

I had quite bad chest pains and breathlessness whilst walking back to Euston Station on Friday 24/6/16. I have a history of coronary heart disease and the chest pain, when I got to Euston, was not responding to my GTN spray. I approached a young police officer who called an ambulance which arrived in about ten minutes. The paramedic who attended first and the ambulance crew were brilliant and took me to UCH.

My impressions of UCH, as someone who lives 100 miles away, were very good. I was taken straight to Resuscitation and then to AMU for an overnight stay where I cannot fault in any way the attention I received from everyone I came into contact with.

The nurses in resus were fantastically re-assuring but unbelievably busy. The amount of people they were dealing with did not, in any way, make me feel that I was not a priority and the care I received was first rate. The doctors, especially the consultant that saw me, were first rate. They took the time to get a full history and work out a plan and were both re-assuring and thorough.

In AMU I arrived just as the nursing staff had changed for the night and I was looked after by a nurse who was faultless. I did not get much sleep because the ward was a bit noisy and some of the patients were quite sick and I saw the nursing staff work like troopers throughout the night; they just did not stop and I lost count of the number of times I saw them act proactively with some of the elderly patients throughout the night. I was given a GTN infusion to relieve the chest pains and was monitored hourly. At one point I felt very nauseous and when I told the nurse she was back within minutes with another infusion to settle the problems. This is the fourth time I have been hospitalised in the past four months and so I have a good basis for comparing treatment. The care, compassion, professionalism and intimacy with patients that I witnessed and experienced on AMU was beyond compare.

I saw the cardiology doctors on the next day and the ward doctor beforehand and even though I was 100 miles from home their concern for my welfare and well-being was better than I had experienced anywhere else. I also saw the consultant that I had first seen in casualty who came and saw me and then took the time to explain the diagnoses, the follow up I needed to consider and what to do in the event of any further issues. The discharge process was simple but they gave me all of the EKG, blood reports and other standard discharge paperwork to take back to my own consultant. Again, in a busy hospital located in the capital, the intimacy and overarching concern for my well-being was an unexpected but pleasant surprise.

Could I ask you to convey my personal thanks to the doctors and the two nurses and the advanced nurse practioner in Resus who looked after me as well as those nurses in AMU, and the ward doctors, on the 24th and 25th of June. You were brilliant!