"Understaffed and Terrible Communication"

I have had two major experiences of Medway over the past 6 months. One where my mother in law passed away there and another more recently where my Grandad went in for a broken arm. Both times there was no single person who I would say was to blame for the poor service or lack of care. Each Nurse and Doctor seemed to work hard d and did their individual tasks but their just wasn't enough of them.

The ward my grandad is currently on there appears to be only two Nurses running the show and there seems to be well over 20 patients they are covering. He wasn't drinking and was spending the whole day asleep and no one noticed. When i made them aware of this they asked 'is this not normal for him'. It took 5 hours from agreeing he should be on fluid to getting some up and attached to him. They couldn't take any blood because he was so dehydrated.

When my mother in law was in Medway she was bumped from ward to ward. When she arrived on one ward (having come from A&E) everyone went about their daily business and we stood there as we waited for anyone to come round and tell us what would happen next. It was getting later and later and so we asked the nurse whether a doctor would be round or what would happen, she didn't know. We asked the lady on the ward desk, she didn't know but said the doctors wouldn't be coming round this late.

Both of these are so symptomatic of Medway's problems. The medical and surgical staff are run off their feet to the point that they can only cover the basics of checking numbers and following exact instructions without any real care or attention being put into noticing small differences in patients. The communication is awful, the doctors and nurses have seemingly no connection at all. As a visitor you quite often perform the role of informer between the nurses and the doctor. It's scary to think what would happen were you not there. There's also no clear person in charge. My example above where my mother in law was just delivered to a ward with no further instructions, there should have been a senior nurse or ward supervisor who came round and explained 'she would be here for now, doctor wont be round until tomorrow AM, we are going to give her x y and z in the meantime etc' but none of this existed. I don't know what other hospitals are like and as i said i don't hold the individual nurses and doctors responsible, there simply isn't enough of them and the communication needs to be improved.

I have to say on both occasions there has been stand out individuals-

A nurse who was quite a senior emergency nurse when my mother in law visited and a staff member on Pheonix ward when my Grandad visited were both excellent, really took the time to care and take an interest.