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"Sheer disregard of duty of care"

About: Watford General Hospital

After staying in Watford general over the past 3 days,I have been belittled by smug doctors who act as if they are better than everyone else. I have been looked after by about 30 different nurses and the only nurses who actually did their job to a good standard was a particular lady from the A&E department and another lady from the blue ward. The entire time I have been here I have had to deal with a very poor sense of communication between the chain of command; for example, I was left not being allowed to eat or drink due to me undergoing the use of general anaesthetic,is this time it took 15 hours for a surgeon to tell me that they were actually operating on me that day and all that happened was they flushed my wound out,after leaving it covered in dirt for 24 hours. Not only this I was moved around 4 different wards in the 3 days I was here. Most of the nurses were completely clueless as to what they were doing and it appeared as though they didn’t check on you (except for blood pressure and time to take antibiotics) but in fact you had to find them if you ever needed something. So my left leg was wrapped up with a bandage as I had a huge gash on my left knee so was unable to extend my leg. Despite this,the final night I stayed I still had to get up out of my bed without any aid and climb into my wheelchair,before using my one good leg to slowly drag myself forward to the toilet. Even though I kept bumping into the wall and caused myself a great deal of pain having to get out of the wheelchair to use the toilet and bend my injured knee,but afterwards I also struggled to raise my leg back up onto the support of my wheelchair,despite asking for help from a staff remember at around 3am to get back to the ward,I was ignored 3 times before having to drag myself back to bed.My bed controls then got stuck and I was completely unable to use the remote that allowed me to call a nurse to obtain painkillers to ease the pain of my ordeal that I just had to unnecessarily go through,I then had to wait for 3 hours until I could finally pull the wire connecting the summons remote of the wall to obtain pain killers and the nurse on hand didn’t even know how to fix the bed so was left in a very awkward position. After all this I totally agree that the nhs service is only getting worse and worse as time goes on and I’m just praying that I never have to use Watford general hospital ever again. If I ever need medical help,I will be going to private care despite whatever financial situation I am in.

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Responses

Response from Watford General Hospital 5 years ago
Watford General Hospital
Submitted on 02/10/2018 at 16:59
Published on nhs.uk at 18:05


We are sorry to hear that the care you received was not as expected. If you would like us to investigate this matter further on your behalf, please contact our PALS team on 01923 217198 or PALS@whht.nhs.uk

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