"Post op Patient care and Pain Control at Southmead Hospital"

After having a tumour removed from my bladder I returned to the ward with a catheter fitted. There were two kinds of nurses on the ward, ones with the green uniform and others with white uniforms.

One of the nurses dropped everything to answer a phone call from their daughter several times during their shift. Other staff mentioned that this was a regular occurrence. This happened once while they were handing out the tablets, I was asked which tablets I needed which they entered on the chart, the ward receptionist came and told the nurse that the daughter was on the phone, who then locked the medical trolley up and left the ward to answer the call, I did not see them again as their shift had now ended, when I mentioned that I had not received my tablets to the night duty staff, I was told I could not be given more tablets as the chart showed I had been given them.

On another occasion my being a diabetic, the blood sugar levels showed a reading of 2.1 and I felt my self drifting into a hypo. The nurse did not know how to treat this, luckily one of the other staff suggested the nurse got a mars bar or a glass of lucozade to give me and then something to eat which brought my sugar levels back to normal.

The other nurse was in charge of my saline drip and my catheter. I was in so much pain when passing urine through the catheter that on occasions this reduced me to tears, when I asked if there was anything I could have to ease the pain, I was told the only thing the hospital could offer were 2 paracetamol. Sadly these had no effect at all and I was a bit ashamed to ask again.

When the catheter was remove there was some blood and urine discharge as the catheter came out of my bladder. Once it was removed the nurse took it away and I did not see them again for over 15 mins, during this time my bed sheets were covered in blood and urine. When they returned I was advised I'd better get myself cleaned up, they found a small sachet of hair shampoo, two towels and a clean gown and told me to go to the bathroom to clean myself up. I spent nearly an hour sitting on the floor of the shower trying the best I could to wash all the blood and urine off. At no time did a nurse check on me to see that all was well.