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"Appalling maternity service"

About: Hinchingbrooke Hospital / Maternity

My wife and I attended my maternity appointments on the 26.1.17, apart from the receptionist who was very nice, the actual medical professionals behaved disgustingly, they could do with taking lessons from the receptionist. Disrespectful, rude, unhelpful would be an understatement. The first midwife we saw ignored us throughout the scan, they didn't even say hello or acknowledge us when we walked through the door. Three times we asked if our baby was okay as the midwife was giving us no information and three times the midwife ignored us, despite me being obviously worried as there was no answer from them. The midwife refused to acknowledge my wife and referred to her as a "carrier piegon" as I was unable to carry my own notes due to being on crutches. I then had to walk over to the other side of the hospital for the consultants appointment, which when your heavily pregnant and on crutches is no easy task. We get there and a health care assistant asks us to come through, the health care assistant can see I'm struggling but states, "the room is right down the end", no consideration, apology or even to have some empathy for how much pain I'm in. When we get in the room the health care assistant asks me "who's this", I presumed they were taking about my wife, so I replied "my wife", to which the health care assistant proceeds rudely with "I'm only asking" to which I stated "and I'm only answering", it further goes on with the health care assistant telling me that I'm using a "tone" with them, to which again I state confused, "I was just answering your question." The health care assistant then continues to inform they don't like my tone, which the health care assistant clearly was not letting go of. In order to get through the appointment I simply put "let's just move on, as I wasn't giving you any tone, she is my wife and there's nothing more I can say". The health care assistant then replies with "ok, normal", in a very derogatory manner. When I enquired to what they meant by normal, the health care assistant kept coming back to my tone, they refused to answer my question and appeared to pull faces by my challenge put to them in respects to their derogatory manner and whether the health care assistant's negative behaviour was aimed at us being a same sex married couple? The health care assistant refused to answer. Next I see the consultant who calls me miss, I have continuously asked the hospital to change my title to Mrs and have been ignored every time, I've asked if they refuse to change it then just call me by my first name, both requests ignored and dismissed. My wife is continually ignored during all of my antenatal care for the past 6 and a half months, we are both parents to our baby and have come to the conclusion that this on some level is down to a lack of education and ignorance on the part of some of these professionals, as we are a same sex couple. I will be taking my complaint further, as the treatment we received was appalling.

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Responses

Response from Hinchingbrooke Hospital 7 years ago
Hinchingbrooke Hospital
Submitted on 30/01/2017 at 14:27
Published on nhs.uk on 31/01/2017 at 01:35


Thank you for taking the time to leave feedback.

We are very sorry to hear about your experience and would really appreciate the opportunity to discuss this with you in person so that we can address your concerns.

Heather Gallagher, our Head of Midwifery is keen to speak to you, and has asked that if you feel able to do so, you contact her directly using the details below:

Heather Gallagher

Head of Midwifery

01480 416416 Ext 3560

Work Mobile: 07703 380895

Email: h.gallagher@nhs.net

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