"Food and hygiene at Belfast City Hospital"

I was recently admitted to the adult cystic fibrosis unit for a period of 2 weeks to get IV antibiotics. The nurses were all lovely but I feel there is still room for improvement in other areas. Mainly, I thought the food was terrible - I had daily problems with it to the point where catering managers were visiting me and promising changes but the kitchen staff largely ignored them. The menu has a section where you can specify portion size - I was informed that this is always ignored. CF patients require about twice the normal portion size (we need a high calorie/high fat/high protein diet) - ticking "large" and being given a lone Weetabix biscuit in a bowl doesn't cut it for me. Hot food was often cold. Menu choices were often ignored and portions remained small.

In terms of hygiene, there were dispensers of antibacterial foam which in my experience by and large were used (although some staff, namely catering, cleaning etc. were hopping between rooms without cleaning their hands, wearing aprons etc. so perhaps this is something that could be improved.) I had a cannula put in my wrist and a pool of blood soaked through my bedsheets - I had to ask a few times for clean sheets. When the nurse finally did change them, they only replaced the white sheets leaving the blood soaked blanket there (but put it the other way round so the blood was by my feet instead of near my head!) There was also a little patch of blood on the floor but this wasn't cleaned. When the IV was put in, tissues etc. were left on the floor by staff and I had to clean up after them. Also I was given a cover for my IV (essentially a cloth bandage) but there was a blood stain on this also. I think this was seen numerous times by nursing staff throughout my 2 week stay but was never changed.

All in all, my main complaint is with the quality and quantity of food but there are a few other things that could be improved.