"I don’t expect to be put at risk or treated like this"

I was taken by ambulance to the Royal Victoria with agonising abdominal pain and arrived in ED Majors.

The ambulance staff were fantastic and engaged with Majors staff, to explain that I was clinically extremely vulnerable due to MS and Chrons (immunocompromised) and that I needed somewhere safe for placement. The ambulance staff were reprimanded for engaging with the sister / staff and for explaining my predicament!

Several individuals were coughing everywhere throughout Majors, weren’t wearing masks, and I felt it was carnage. There was no ventilation and this coughing continued all night long, seemingly no covid mitigations were present.

Thankfully I was placed in a bay with automatic double doors, which remained closed until times when access was required.

During the next day, I was trying to get rested when the Sister and Bed Planner stormed through the doors, into the bay and told me that I was being moved, despite no prior consultation or explanation to me or my mother, who was also present. Appallingly the bed and I were trailed into a neighbouring bay in Majors, which was open in nature and had a flimsy curtain with substantial gaps at top and bottom and in the midst of carnage and viruses, to accommodate another patient!

The sister tried to cover their tracks and explain that this curtained bay was a closed bay, but it was far from closed and far from safe. Given I perform covid risk assessments in work, I was appalled at this move, especially as other closed bays with doors became available and shockingly when the closed room - with doors - became available again, I wasn’t moved back. My mother raised this with the sister and felt she was belittled.

I wasn’t given any of my prescribed medication throughout my stay - this is a first.

One of the male nurses/healthcare assistants was going to help me use a bed pan, but the female healthcare worker chased him away, and rightly so.

I was so weak from MS that I had to use the bed pan / commode and the second bay had a curtain, zero privacy and put me at great risk. It was demoralising!

I was going to discharge myself because of the aforementioned occurrences, abysmal attitude of senior staff/sister plus bed planner and being in an area of high risk, but eventually got a CT scan. As we weren’t getting updates regarding progress, my mum asked the sister when I was due to get a CT scan. My mother felt that the sister was blunt, abrasive and portrayed the message of wait your turn when she enquired about the next steps.

I was in agony - everything in life, including pain, has a root cause. I was pumped full of painkillers and went home, still none the wiser as to what happened, that I had to get an ambulance to hospital.

I don’t expect to be put at risk or treated like this in hospital.

I explained the risk of covid to the sister because of my MS and Chrons. I have been very unwell from covid before and this was not an irrational fear. It appeared that none of the staff knew the intricacies of MS or how dangerous Majors was - perhaps hospital staff could be given training by the MS Society? It was appalling to me that we had to explain the risk - and nothing changed. I was in the same open bay, which was so noisy that I could not get rested and my MS was starting to relapse, causing great pain, although the staff didn’t seem to understand how serious this was.

Eventually the surgeon consulted me and confirmed that the scan results were clear. But when I asked the surgeon what to do if this happens again, I was shockingly informed that 1 in 5 of us are in pain and we don’t know why, so if this happens again I’ll have to come back to hospital.

If this happens again, I won’t be back - even if it causes serious harm, as I found the sister and bed planners in Majors appalling and terrible at their job. Seemingly the sister’s reputation proceeded them as others were not impressed with their attitude and hinted that some staff have a terrible attitude.

The sister tried to sound empathetic when my mum raised concerns and that they understand, but they couldn’t sound less empathetic if they tried! It wasn’t genuine and they didn’t care, in my view.  Something has to change. I’m sure plenty of people would do a better job, more efficiently and with a more pleasant attitude.

Hospital shouldn’t cause more stress or danger - in this instance, things failed miserably.