"my husbands treatment at nottingham city hospital barclay ward following a motorbike accident"

After being stabilised at Grantham general hospital in Lincolnshire my husband was immediately transferred to the city hospital HDU unit. His injuries were a broken clavicle, broken and twisted thumb, a punctured lung and all his ribs had been broken down his left side, nothing was immediately done about the breaks but he had a chest drain inserted before the move. On arriving at the city hospital I gave all of my husbands details at the desk to then be greeted with "I’m sorry but your husband is not at this hospital and he is not showing up on our list of transfers" After some persistence and around thirty minutes later I was taken to him. He had been given a block epidural and settled into his bed and the first night went smoothly.

On the second night I was told to leave his side and retire to the relatives’ room until morning, for obvious reasons I was not willing to leave him, also there were no rules on the HDU unit about how long or where your relatives stay. Other than this we had no complaints until he was stable enough to be moved four days later to Barclay thoracic ward. My husband had been here a day when his care from the nurses here started to go down hill, his chest drain hadn't been checked since he left HDU and he had not had his routine daily visit from the doctor. His catheter bag had not been emptied and I was washing him every morning. Not that I minded doing this but it was all part of the nurses job as a carer!!

Several days later his epidural had come out over night and was in a lot of pain until dinner time when a nurse decided to fetch a doctor, he was then given a choice, he could have the epidural recited or he could have a morphine pump which would be administered through IV, he opted for the morphine so that he could try and wean himself off the pain relief as he felt better, as one of the nurses stated "he would have to get used to the pain". One hour later he was told he would be prepped for theatre so they could recite the block epidural as they thought the morphine was not suitable, (Why give him the choice). he was taken down to theatre for what I was told would be a fifteen minute procedure, one hour later he had not returned and I was trying to get an answer out of the nurses as to his ware bouts, a little later and still non the wiser his bed was returned to the ward covered in blood and without my husband in it! Distraught I fled the ward looking for him and eventually found him back on the HDU ward, apparently he had gone down hill during his procedure and doctors wanted to monitor him more closely over night. I'm not surprised he took a turn for the worse after all the messing around beforehand; he never wanted to go down to theatre and had got himself worked up.

The next day he was taken back to Barclay thoracic ward where he later contracted MRSA (not surprising really looking at the state of the ward). His catheter was removed a day later and the next morning when I came down he was naked in bed, he had, had an accident during the night due to his bladder readjusting after the removal of the catheter, when the nurse was called they kindly changed the bed but not my husband, not even a wash down! the nurses told him that due to his infection he would have to use the public toilets out in the corridor and not the ones on the ward, not easy doing this wilt having to push his epidural stand, the drip stand and carry his chest drain container, the nurses wouldn't even go with him and aid him at the loo! He was also later moved to a side room and was also told not to use the day room provided.

A little later he was in a lot of pain, and was complaining of feeling bloated and not able to use the toilet, it took me all day on the ward to finally get someone to come to him, it was the next day though when they finally gave him something to relieve this. also whilst on the ward just before the removal of his chest drain, the tube had got blocked with fatty tissue and was blocking the escape of any excess fluid, when I finally got the attention of a nurse she called a doctor to come and take a look, the nurse then whilst showing the doctor squeezed the tube and sent all the fluid and tissue that was blocking the escape strait back into the lung, needless to say my husband hit the roof with pain and had tears streaming down his face. As a result of the nurses actions the drain had to be replaced. Every night during his stay he was given an anti clotting jab into his lower abdomen, if one of the nurses was throwing a dart she couldn’t have been rougher!!

After two weeks of being in hospital and nothing being done about my husbands broken bones he finally got a visit from a physio, she came back in the morning for two days and then decided to tell me what to do and that I must carry her work on! My husband was given a breathing exercise measure, he was shown how to use it and then I had to observe his progress for them! The day before discharge he was told they were taking him down to theatre to put his thumb right! (it had already started to set after this length of time) late treatment of this resulted in a return visit later on for the wire placed in his thumb to be removed, (we live miles away) finally on the day of discharge I was handed a bag of surgical swabs, and surgical dressings which I was told I would have to use, the swabs so I could take samples and drop them off at our doctors to be checked for remaining MRSA and the dressings for me to dress his surgical wound where the drain had been inserted, apparently there had been no after care organised for him!! He was told whilst staying in hospital he would need an operation on his clavicle bone, this never happened and he was discharged without even a mention of this and he has never even seen a physio for any of the breaks other than the two visits in hospital, when I questioned this I was told it wasn't there responsibility! We found the care and cleanliness on this ward are non existent!