"Poor, poor and very poor...buck your ideas up!"

What I liked

Nothing - staff generally lack common courtesy. One admin person kept referring, rather patronisingly, to patients as 'love', and was appallingly rude to a woman who was 30 minutes late for her appointment and told her rather sharply that there was no way she was going to be seen as she was so late, but on pressing said she would ask. The woman was taken in a couple of minutes later because the clinic was empty and no one else was waiting!

What could be improved

Virtually everything.

The staff could stop thinking they are superior to their patients - try treating them with a bit of respect. Patients names are right there on their appointment letters, on their files and the computer in front of the staff member, so there is absolutely no need to refer to anyone as 'love'. It's not an endearment when used in the manner it was in the incident described above.

The doctors should stop lying to the patients. If you've lost test results tell the patient that is the case, don't try to fob them off with a 'we'll contact you later' and then don't bother to do it. The bottom line is, if you've lost them, you're going to have to repeat them, and therefore the patient will find out.

Drop the God-complexes: we know you're well educated (mostly), but so are some of your patients, so don't treat them all as if their educations ended when they were 12. Some of us are professionals too and it's appalling to be talked to in basic language that tells you nothing - and when you ask questions you're basically fobbed off. The result is that you look like you don't actually know what you're talking about, which doesn't instil any level of trust in any diagnosis you might put forward.

I could go on - but my recommendation would be choose another hospital for your care.

Anything else?

I made a complaint to PALs and got a very nice response - but I haven't seen anything change and have made a further complaint. I'll leave PALs to deal with that, but in the interim I am returning to my GP for a referral elsewhere.

In addition, this page is woefully out of date - the department I visited has none of the doctors listed on the page, and I couldn't find any reference to the ones I have seen over the past several years.