"Small Improvement on previous stay, but still a..."

What I liked

I had a room, the staff remembered me from previous stay earlier in the year. Some of the less senior staff took time to come and chat and empathise with my repeat stay on their ward.

What could be improved

Please give patients more information on treatment, diagnosis ( or lack thereof) and engage patient when doing handovers or doctors rounds. I'd just left hospital 4 days before this emergency re-admission. It may have been helpful for that to be considered without me having to explain to one of the junior doctors, after I'd asked to talk to someone, that I believed this admission may have had something to do with the former planned surgery I'd had 4 days previously.

Why is it so difficult for the medical staff to realise that patients are scared and vulnerable and need honest and empathic dialogue.

Discharge at this hospital seems to be either, rushed....or, dragged out. Can't the hospital engage a protocol that each discharge is done in an efficient and courteous way, therefore preventing patients from either feeling they've been forgotten about or that the staff can't wait for them to leave.

Anything else?

Yes, people still smoke and we all know we shouldn't. It would be nice not to be looked at as a leper when you trek from the ward to have a cigarette. One lady I spoke to (not on my ward btw) signed herself out as she just couldn't bear the comments she got when she left the ward to assuage her addiction!

There have been improvements on the ward I was on, the best being patients can help themselves to a hot drink when wanted! Great! See, little things can make a patient happy.