"Poor Communication"

My child has renal failure due to a failed transplant last year. As a result of this he has dialysis everynight at home. The Staff and nurses at the childrens hospital in Glasgow were a great suppost to us at this difficult time and we are so thankful for that.

However the clinic at Aberdeen childrens hospital is split between two consultants,so one month we go in we get told one thing and the next month we get the other consultant and they say the opposite. I feel the communication between them is awful and as a result of this we are consistently up and down as a family. We are waiting to get our child on the renal transplant list and we were told in summer 09 that it wouldn't take much to get him on and we are still waiting.

We've been disappointed over the last year to have not had the same service we've been used to from the renal liaison staff. We had a great relationship with the last nurse, she was always on the end of the phone when you needed her, even at nights on her mobile. She also visited our child at our home regularly and this was before he became so ill that he needed dialysis. A Five star service that made our lives so much easier.

After what I think was a very poor introduction with my child, one of the nurses has often given us information to find out later from another member of staff that this is not the case at all. We have phoned for blood results, to be told that the nurse is too tired to check or they have a headache and they say they want to go home. This nurse has never visited us at home in the year we have had the dialysis machine. If I ask the nurse to find something out for us we usually have to do it ourselves. I once apologised to this nurse for phoning yet again to check something and the response was that they have patients with children who have far more medical problems than our child who phone less than me. I was shocked as its a lot of pressure on a family who have to care for a sick child at home, this coming from a nurse who is meant to be there to help families like ourselves is very disappointing.