"Belfast City Hospital"

I had badly injured my knee around 4 years ago (have only just found out about this website, hence the late post!) and was put into a splint/cast for 2 months to allow it to recover. I had to walk on crutches for all of this time, but as I am pretty tall I found the crutches I had been given at the Belfast City hospital were not long enough - I was suffering lower back pain because I had to stoop.

I rang and enquired with the A&E about getting a longer set and they told me to come down and ask in person. And so...I got myself into a taxi, made the journey down at my own expense and at great inconvenience.

After hanging around the A&E for a short time I eventually poked my head round the door of the nurses' office. There was a junior nurse on duty, plus what looked like a more senior nurse (perhaps a matron or equivalent). The latter was exceedingly rude to me and made no attempt to help me in any way in finding a new set of crutches. She simply told me that no longer ones were available and that I would have to source (and buy) them myself.

I didn't want to get into an argument with her in public (the other junior nurse looked rather embarrassed at the exchange), so I left it. I went home and ordered a pair of longer crutches on the web at a cost of around £30, which helped with the problems I had been facing immediately.

A couple of weeks later I began physio at the BCH to get my knee back in shape and explained what had happened re: the crutches. The physio was very shocked and said that they could have supplied me with the crutches I needed (free of charge) had I been sent round to them by the nurse on that day a few weeks earlier.

I felt the way I was treated was, at best, offhand and dismissive, at worst rude and uncaring.