"care on John Proctor ward"

Thank you for posting your thoughts regarding your care received by the team on John Procter ward. I am glad you feel that overall you have had good care.But I am sorry that you felt you were not given enough information, could you expand a little more on this as I am not clear what information you wanted and I would like to be able to review how the information is given by the staff so we can ensure that we are doing the best we can in all cases.

I am sorry that you felt your only pain relief was paracetamol as the clinical team managing your care would have a wide range of painkillers to choose from if they knew that the paracetamol was not working well for you - there are many reasons why the paracetamol may have been the best or only appropriate option for you personally, but I am concerned that you waited 2 days for a prescription to be written by the team. Your care was managed by a nurse practioner and a doctor who are both on site monday to friday and we have out of hours medical cover and so there should be no reason for you to have had to wait - I will discuss this with the ward manager to see if we can see why this happened to you.

I appreciate that the ward may have felt too warm for you, this is always a difficult one to get right for everyone as many patients feel the cold and want the heat turned up at this time of the year, we do try to keep it as regulated as possible by general feedback from patients and visitors in order that we can meet the majority of needs.

I have passed your comments regarding the food to the catering team here at the hospital, and the ward team as they plate the food at mealtimes. I am sorry that you felt the food was too much for you and there were too many vegetables on your plate, we do try to ensure a balanced meal and aim to give appropriate portion sizes where possible.It is always ok to ask for a little less food the staff would much sooner give patients what they want rather than patients feeling they can't eat their meal as there is too much food for them.

I appreciate that waiting until last to leave the table can be frustrating and the staff do try to make sure that this is done as fairly as possible, - if the staff are aware that a family member is waiting to see you they will always try to see you you first where they can.

I undertsand it can be frustrating to have to wait for a member of staff to come to you on occasions, I hope to reassure you that any delay is due to the fact that staff will be with another patient and will come to you as soon as is possible.

To reassure you the staffing levels are reviewed on a constant basis and are at safe levels for the servcie we provide at present.

I will pass this to the team on the ward and the ward sister and I will discuss in more detail the issues you have rasied to see how we may further improve our care delivery and I thank you again for taking the time to repsond as it really does make a difference and allows us the opportuinty to keep learning and improving services.