"Feedback to help improve service"

Labour ward 10th Sept the midwife assigned to my care was lovely, really taking on board all of my concerns and fears, particularly my fear of needles with needing to have a canular fitted for the drip to be administered. Midwife was in the middle of putting the canular in, there was a knock at the door and it was the doctors ward round, the midwife advised she was in the middle of a procedure and to wait outside, this was ignored and they all proceeded to enter the room surrounding my bed and talking at me, over the top of me and directing the midwife and questioning her actions. I was already feeling stressed and this only added further distress to the situation, they could have gone to another room and returned at a time convenient to me, the patient but rather than take into account my feelings it was more important to them to do things on their schedule. This was the first point I was not happy with.

After the birth of my baby eventually by emergency c section on 11th Sept I moved on to ward 1D where my baby and I were cared for. I found out that my baby was on antibiotics only when they were being administered for the 2nd dose, no consent was attained from myself or my fiance (babies dad) but he had to give consent for vitamin k injection. Not that he would have objected but the lack of communication is the issue here.

Following on from this we were informed my baby had strep b and they needed to do a lumbar puncture to see if the infection had spread to his brain. At no stage before did the procedure get fully explained including the pros and cons as well as any questions I had about the infection. No consent was given for this procedure to be carried out, staff just came in and took my baby away leaving me in significant distress believing that my baby could potentially die. When my baby was delivered back to the ward my partner and I were not there as we had been advised to take a walk or go have coffee so when we returned we did not get a full explanation of what had happened, we were just told that the procedure had been unsuccessful and they would try again the following day. As you can imagine as first time parents we were very upset and still did not have a full understanding of what we were going through or if our baby was going to survive. All of this could have been avoided, had things been explained and discussed with us prior to any treatment being administered. The following day the midwife on the ward told us that the lumbar puncture had been attempted 3 times unsuccessfully which again was news to us so when the registrar came in that day she said that she needed to have a long conversation with the parents about what was going on. The reply was, well I can have a conversation but it won't be a long one, not really the attitude expected. The midwife then took the case to the senior consultant as she was unhappy with the care we had received. Overall it's the doctors I would say who need to improve communication with patient