"I felt I was invisible"

My story is of two halves and the very different care I received whilst being in the same hospital.

I presented at A&E at Perth Royal Infirmary, very concerned that I was having a heart attack. I could feel a strange beat in my heart and was experiencing chest pain.

After being seen by a triage nurse I was taken straight through and very quickly an ECG was undertaken. I was reassured that there was no evidence of a heart attack taking place but the Nurse Practitioner did confirm that an Arrythmia had been detected on one of the printouts.

I was told I would be admitted to Ward 4 but they would do blood tests to double check for signs of heart attack and a chest x-ray first. Both of these happened very quickly.  I was very impressed with the staff within the A&E department, who took time to explain things to me and I felt reassured.  The staff there were compassionate and very understanding.

The porter then took me to Ward 4 at Perth Royal Infirmary around 8pm and from that point on my experience was a much more negative one unfortunately.

My husband had come up with me and a nurse popped in, took my blood pressure and then told us the doctors would be around in a couple of hours.  My husband thought it would be a good idea for him to wait with me and see what the doctors had to say but the same nurse popped in over an hour later to tell him he would need to leave (but they didn't say that at the outset).

I was put in a side room and no-one came near me. My pain was increasing and I asked the nurse if I could get some paracetamol and they said they would try to get it written up to request some.  Around an hour and forty minutes later I asked again if there was any sign of the paracetamol and was told no it hadn't been written up yet. No one came in to ask how I was feeling and I felt I had been abandoned whilst feeling quite distressed about my pain and sensation in my heart.

Some 5 hours after arriving on the ward, a junior doctor came in and asked me to relay what had been happening and said I would need a chest x-ray and blood tests. They seemed very surprised when I told them that I'd already had both so communication was very poor between the plan that had been created in A&E and what actually happened.

A doctor came in and carried out a further ECG and whilst fitting the sticky pads noted that A&E had left particular round sticky pads on me and mentioned that I was meant to have been on a monitor.  They then left and the nurse came in with my paracetamol. I never did get fitted up to the monitor I was meant to have been on.

A different Doctor/Consultant woke me up to advise that the blood test and the x-ray had been clear and the last ECG had not showed any sign of the Arrythmia and that they believed my pain was from acid reflux and that I could go home if I would feel more comfortable.

Overall I felt I was invisible in Ward 4 and genuinely felt that if I did have a heart attack in this side room that nobody would have noticed.  I was worried, scared and felt like I had been abandoned and that the nursing staff were not sympathetic or understanding in the slightest. I heard nursing staff address other patients and they sounded impatient and exasperated.

I of course totally understand that as ward 4 is an admissions ward it is extremely busy and dealing with difficult situations, but there should be an expectation that nurses treat all patients with respect and empathy.  I feel communication was severely lacking between the different departments and almost some confusion creeping in.

So in summary, A&E at PRI was excellent and I couldn't fault the staff, but in Ward 4 improvements are required to keep patients informed and involved in their care plan and to make patient feel like they're being attended to with the best possible care available.