"Recent experience of orthopaedic trauma care, successes and challenges"

I fell at home and broke my femur. I received great support from out of hours, who arranged an ambulance. Ambulance crew were amazing, think they were from Cumbernauld, and could not have been nicer, very professional, very positive and reassuring. Their assessment and responses to managing the pain, which was excruciating at that time, was so helpful. I was taken to Wishaw University Hospital and was assessed, x-rayed and given a nerve block to manage the pain overnight with a plan to go to theatre the following day.

Surgery was cancelled, that was the Saturday. By this time the nerve block had worn off and the pain was again excruciating. I did utilise pain relief prescribed, but was unable to get on top of this. The surgery was re scheduled for the Sunday, I patiently waited all day to be informed this was cancelled again.

No one was able to  tell me why and no one was able to say when it was likely to go ahead, and I personally found this quite alarming as I was not able to weight bear and was not sure how long I was going to be in this situation. I felt very vulnerable, invisible, like I did not matter and I could not understand how no one could see the distress and pain I was in and how hopeless and helpless I felt.

The staff on the ward were doing their absolute best, you could see how busy they were and the constant demands within the ward. I Spoke with one of the nurses I think who seemed surprised that I was feeling so distressed and I think this is because there are so few of them with such a high demand work load that it is impossible for them to cover everything.

Once I had spoken with the nurse, they came back to me quickly to say that I would definitely go to theatre on the Monday, first thing in the morning. From then on everything went brilliantly, I had the operation, thank you so much, great support from physio and occ health and was able to be discharged on the Wednesday.

My overall experience has been very good but feel that the delays and communication  could be better. I realise that there are many demands with less resources, but it would have helped to have a progressive plan forward as feeling in limbo definitely heightened distress.

However, I would like to express my gratitude to all of the staff I came in contact with throughout my patient experience, including ambulance, A&E, x-ray, porters, theatres, physio and OT. In my view, you all truly do deserve a medal, thank you so much for all that you do. You are all very much appreciated.