"Emergency stay and mixed messages"

My dad was admitted to Dr Grays Hospital late June with sepsis due to an inflamed gall bladder. He was treated promptly in the emergency department and when the problem was identified he was admitted to ward 5 under the care of the surgical team. He had 5 nights on the ward before being discharged home. 

On the whole, he said his experience of the nursing staff and health care support workers on the ward was very positive and he told me that everyone had been very kind, friendly and hard-working. He said they couldn't do enough for him.

Unfortunately his experience of the team of surgical doctors was more mixed. He was very happy with his initial care under the weekend consultant and felt that they communicated very clearly with him. They told him that due to other health problems he would not be fit enough to have his gall bladder removed under general anaesthetic and he would have to be treated with antibiotics instead. He was happy enough with this situation as he did not want an operation if it could be avoided. 

Unfortunately he had a poorer experience with the consultant who took over during the week. Dad reported to me that he didn't understand what he was being told by this consultant. There was an issue with his blood tests that he was told were a mess and he was led to believe that this consultant did want to operate on his gall bladder.

When I visited him he was upset by this situation and afraid he was going to be put through an operation he had already been told he wasn't well enough to have. I spoke to the other doctors on the surgical team who told me that the first story was correct and he was not for an operation due to issues with his heart. Despite this, the second consultant went on to tell my dad on discharge that he would fix a hernia that he has, which really has nothing to do with his recent ill health and he doesn't feel he needs fixed. His discharge letter says he has to attend the hospital to see about having this hernia fixed, something that he has never asked for. It has left him confused.  

On ward 5 he was on oxygen and an IV bag of fluids. I encouraged him to use his call buzzer to get help when he needed it. He then told me that his call buzzer didn't work and he also said that only 1 out of the 4 buzzers in the room actually worked. (I wasn't able to confirm this, but I know his didn't work.) I asked the nurse looking after him about this and they said that unfortunately many of the buzzers on the ward didn't work. My dad then told me that overnight he had tried to use the call buzzer to get help for another patient who had fallen out of bed. This was when he discovered his buzzer didn't work. He couldn't get up himself as his IV stand was attached to his bed and he was on oxygen, all he could do was shout for help, but they were in a room quite far from the nurses' desk. Once help  arrived my dad was given a falls alarm device (which he could pull and it made a loud noise) as a substitute for his call buzzer.  

When it came to being sent home, he was told at the ward round in the morning that he would get home that day. However he wasn't actually able to leave with his medications until around 5 'o clock in the evening. He felt very unhappy about this delay.