"poor long term care in an innapropriate ward"

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Poor long term care in an innapropriate ward.

My son's care on the neuro surgery ward was inadequate. Communication between staff and with us was very poor. Some nurses were very caring but they are in a difficult situation as they seem to have no power or leadership. We found our relative unwashed and unshaven and on a couple of occasions naked in bed even though he was unconscious he was in a side room with no front desk monitoring. When we complained to management promises of 24 hour nursing were promised but only lasted two weeks and were not always fulfilled. Staff ignore the heart monitor alarms, there were no bumpers on the bed sides and our son frequently fell against them even though he had a head injury it took 3 months to get one bumper and then another week to get a tatty dirty old one that did not fit. Communication with the doctors and consultant were virtually non existent, physio and OT sessions were too infrequent and we did not feel ourr son was safe there so had to visit twice a day to make sure he was ok. We had one very serios incident where if I and my friend had not been there we feel he may well have died.

We still do not have sufficient answers to many of our questions even though our son has left this hospital. The ward often felt either undersstaffed or chaotic. Nursing teams changed so often that one never knew who to ask for help.The complaints department took eight weeks to respond to us and gave us a very unsatisfactory report. They wrote asking for our son to sign a form even thougfh he was unconscious. The matron's recommendations were not carried out. Finally we got a call from the hospital social worker allocated to us to tell us our son would be moving to another hospital on the following Friday, in fact he had already moved one week before. The stress caused to us by this hospital was enormous,