"Failure of communication between staff"

My daughter had a transplant of kidney and pancreas in mid-2010.

She had all her outpatient care not from the hospital where the transplant took place but her local hospital which looked after her dialysis needs and all associated with this.

She became unwell and after many weeks trying to find the cause she was diagnosed with CMV which I believe to be a virus that usually attacks transplanted patients and can be very severe and dangerous. Not enough that it had taken a very long time to find this she sat in side room in the kidney patients bay for over 8 hours alone and no treatment having been given feeling very very unwell.

Eventually she was sent home, after having blood tests, only to get a call from a doctor on this unit telling her to get down to the hospital and go to the self admission part and tell them he had sent for her to be admitted for intra venous treatment, they would have a bed waiting for her.

We duly went expecting that she would be greeted by someone who expected her to arrive. No one knew who she was or why she was there, they then tried to get her to sit in a general waiting room full of various illnesses when she was on anti-rejection drugs and this would make her vulnerable even further. Only when I protested were we taken to a side room again.

After a 3 hour wait no-one had offered to speak to her or when they did it was to ask why she had come to hospital, and despite stressing that she had been sent for by a doctor whose name we didn't know the question remained the same, 'Yes, but why are you here?'.

Eventually we walked to the ward where she was supposed to have a bed waiting and they were annoyed that we had gone to see them, so we went back but this had obviously stirred someone into action as she was then asked to go to a Triage Nurse (why I'll never know I fear) who after my intervention on my daughter's behalf finally got the message as by this time my daughter was extremely poorly.

We eventually were shown on to the ward and put in a room for barrier nursing (strange really when you think where they asked her to sit originally). By this time it was after 11.00pm and we were called down to the hospital at 5.00pm.

I left for the night thinking that all would now be well and they would begin this very important treatment, only to see her being wheeled off to x ray then being wheeled back again, as they were going to come to her instead!

When I returned the following day, they had left her all night with no treatment and no blankets or pillows, just on a plastic mattress which I think is absolutely disgraceful and their excuse was that they don't have enough to go round.

Eventually the treatment that we rushed to the hospital to have began at 3.30pm the following day, and only then because my daughter asked what was going on and the doctor's response was "Oh, I forgot about you".