"Impressive ITU care"

Came into University College Hospital for jaundice and blocked biliary duct. Unblocking procedure caused life threatening pancreatitis. Spent 2+ months in Critical Care unit of third floor then same again in Adult ward. While in Intensive care, pancreatitis caused multi organ failure. Doctors and nurses treated me for every possible ailment and went above and beyond with multi disciplinary meetings to decide courses of action. Patient Family were welcomed and encouraged to feel comfortable and to help patient to stay alive. In most cases, family were kept well informed when patient too poorly to engage with medical decisions (a couple of scary exceptions were probably the result of consultants being run off their feet during a week long period of duty). This ward definitely saved my life by throwing every medical resource at a critical patient - including sensitivity and humour. Two months is a long time to be in a critical care ward, but they made it as welcoming as possible and always made sure to take good care. Even if every consultant had a different style - which was confusing at times as a patient, but probably also helped save my life. The only suggestion I would make is to see if there’s a way to improve communication, especially during consultant change-over, as those were the times when we received information that felt confusing and sometimes sounded scary or dangerous because it seemed to go directly against the advice of the previous consultant — only sometimes, not always. Overall the care was absolutely impressive, attentive, kind, detailed, and definitely life saving.