"Nursing staff excellent, internal communication..."

What I liked

Nursing staff very friendly, reassuring and helpful. Wards are very clean. Our dietician is wonderful! Our surgical liaison nurse is very helpful.

What could be improved

Treatment times - in nearly every aspect and stage of treatment the hospital took the government recommendations on waiting times to the wire. From GP referral to start of chemotherapy treatment took 69 days.

Availability of helpline advice for patients on chemotherapy - we had great concerns about side effects and tried to get through to a chemotherapy nurse for at least 40 minutes. We eventually, out of despair, talked to our surgical liason nurse who gave us some advice only to be 'advised' later by our consultant's registrar that this was the wrong person to talk to. This is added stress to what is already a very stressful situation on it's own. Great effort is made to be told about the possible side effects, mailnly to cover the hospital's liability, but general reassurance and advice is not very forthcoming.

Inter-departmental/team communication needs improvement - from nurse to doctor to teams, for example information and decisions made at consultant/registrar appointments does not seem to filter through to the ward staff when having treatment so we have to check each time we visit that the information has been passed down. Is this our job?