"Lost patient"

I met an elderly lady at the reception area in area main foyer, she was trying to use the internal telephone to find her husband who she believed to be in HDU. She was wearing a hearing aid and couldn't hear the operator on the phone, the phone was crackling, she asked if I could help her. I took the phone off her as she was clearly upset (tears in her eyes). The person on the phone said if she stopped breathing so heavy she would hear me. I explained that the line was crackly, she had hearing problems and she was upset as she had been upto HDU 3 times since 1pm looking for her husband who was 89 and she was concerned may be dead as he was having an operation. It was now 4: 30pm. The person on the phone said that the information they had on their computer said her husband was in HDU and that's all they could tell me

I said repeated this information to the woman who was getting more upset by the minute, I asked the operator if there was anyway they could check again as her husband clearly wasn't on the ward...they eventually offered to put me through to the ward. unfortunately we then got disconnected...I eventually got the ward telephone number and spoke to a staff nurse who informed me that the gentleman in question was being wheeled onto the ward as we spoke from theatre

I relayed this information to the lady who was relieved. She was so upset having undergone 4 hours of not knowing what had happened to her husband.