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The all staff are very helpful ...

Story from nhs.uk

"The all staff are very helpful ..."

About: Lister Hospital

(as a relative),

What I liked

The all staff are very helpful and try their best considering their work load.

What could be improved

The lifts and more communication with patient and relatives of patients.

Anything else?

My experience with Lister hospital has been good - it is my 84 year old father's experience which I am rather upset about. My father has been an outpatient for the past four months, attending clinics, tests and scans to find out what has been causing him so much pain and weight loss. Last Thursday 29th April he had an appointment with his specialist - he thought it was a usual routine appointment - this turned out not to be the case. Baring in mind that my father who is very frail now and had had to make two long bus journeys on his own to attend the clinc(I did not find this out until the afternoon). He was told by his specialist that they where very sorry to tell him but after months of tests and scans he has terminal cancer and may have

about one month maybe a year to live. Well fair enough - what I cannot quite understand is the specialists knew that they were going to deliver bad news to my father why oh why did they not ask him to have a relative or friend to come with him. He then had to make that long journey home all on his own after being told he may not have long to live!! All I want to know is what is the normal policy/ procedure for telling a patient a that they have only months to live. I am very upset and angry with how my father was treated - or once again is it because he is old and a waste of time. This has left our whole family in shock.

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Responses

Response from Lister Hospital 13 years ago
Lister Hospital

Submitted on 04/05/2010 at 16:11
Published on nhs.uk on 05/05/2010 at 04:15

Many thanks for getting in touch. While we were pleased to see that you were happy with the care you received while at the Lister, we were very concerned about your father's outpatients experience.

When patients are due to receive such sad news, which may sometimes not be confirmed until a few days before the due appointment, one of our clinical nurse specialist will always sit in. The aim of their being there is to make sure that the patient has time to ask information of them and to ensure that they can get home safely - often we are asked to contact a family friend or we can arrange for a taxi. Our clinical nurse specialists can often spend upwards of an hour with patients in such circumstances.

From what you've described, it's not clear whether or not this happened and speaking with our colleagues in the Trust's cancer services division, they would very much like to investigate the matter further. If you would be so kind, we would welcome if you would provide further details on your father's experience in an e-mail to generalenquiries.enh-tr@nhs.net. Once we have this information, we will forward it to the cancer services team to look in to on your father's behalf.

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