"Excellent staff, excellent food, exceptionally..."

What I liked

I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of nursing care, the quality of food, and the dedication and expertise of the doctors. I was in for 11 nights (though expected to be in for one night!). The place was exceptionally clean. Though at times they were short of nursing staff, they all did a grand job.

What could be improved

My real reservation was the long time I had to wait for scans - up to 3 days in one case. This meant that I was occupying a bed unnecessarily for that length of time, simply due to (presumably), lack of staff and./or equipment. There must be a lot of money wasted by keeping people in beds for days on end simply waiting for scans. I was in hospital for 11 nights, and about 8 of those were due to having to wait for scans to take place. And, of course, when waiting for a scan, you are on clear fluids only regime, and if the scan doesn't take place that day, it's repeated the next day. It sems that the scanning department only operate office hours, and not at all at weekends (apart from emergencies), which means patients spending the weekend in beds doing nothing.

Other niggles included out-of-date information: the patients' brochure said that a bedside phone trolley was available, but this was not the case in two of the three wards I occupied. In the last one, there was a phone in the day room , but it wasn't working. I asked a staff nurse if there was a telephone directory he could bring me, but there wasn't. There were also prominent notices saying that mobile phones were not permitted - but everyone uses them.

I wasn't asked on arrival (or at any time), if coming into hospital in an emergency caused any problems at home. It would be good if there were some sort of welfare person who checked up on things like that. I needed to organise my cats to be fed, and various other things cancelled etc., but had absolutely no way of contacting anyone as I didn't have my address book with me, nor a mobile phone.

On discharge I had to wait five hours for the paperwork, and when it finally arrived at 7.30pm , it couldn't be printed off as a doctor had to sign it, and none was available!