"ENT Peterborough City Hospital"

Firstly I should start by saying that the Sisters we saw in the Day Treatment Unit and Ward A2 were excellent . My father suffers from dropfalls (he falls for no apparent reason) so needs to be watched when he is standing/moving . The rest of the nursing staff were also very good and I actually felt confident leaving him in their care for a couple of hours . Fortunately the only fall my father had whilst at the hospital was when he was with me in the Forum and he almost hit one of the small tables .

Suffice to say that after a visit to ENT last Thursday I am now VERY CONCERNED about this hospital . I don't really know where to start with ENT so will go back almost 3 years when my father first started having trouble with his throat - he was almost choking every time he ate . The G.P. booked him in for a hospital appointment and after several months we went to an appointment at the Thorpe Road Clinic who sent us back to Peterborough City after yet more waiting I started to chase this and my father final y saw a "proper Consultant 18months after he should have apparently we should never have been sent to Thorpe Road - admin error !! . 

The consultant wanted to see my father again in a few months and when we went back we were told that we were on the wrong list as this Consultant specialised in Cancer patients and this fortunately was not my fathers problem  . The nurse was told by the Consultant to make sure we were put on the right list . Our next appointment was with  another Consultant on ENT who when I explained our problems with the previous Consultant decided to "bad mouth" the other in front of us , saying every Consultant sees everyone they don't pick and choose .

Another 6 months went by - I started chasing these appointments again - and my father was seen again and it was agreed that an operation would be the way to go . Finally 5 months on in October we received a letter saying the op. would be in the morning and we needed to be at the hospital by 7-30am .  My fathers op was finally done at 3-00PM . Along with the falls my father suffers from severe headaches and sitting around a busy hospital all day just made this worse . I went up to the hospital that evening only to be told that the op had failed and that my father would need to see their best surgeon (why did he not see him in the first place ?) - this does not instil confidence in people . We then had another 4 weeks to wait for that appointment .

What made me write this though was the fact that having gone to that appointment last Thursday we were told that we needed to see the Surgeon - he sees everyone personally - and another appointment would be made (firstly it was while we waited then we were told it would come in the post) . My father had 4 falls before we went out Thursday and several more when we were home , I have a form of agoraphobia and find it terribly difficult at this time to leave my home and even worse the Outpatients is not on the ground floor so we have to go upstairs . I don't do lifts and obviously my father can't do the stairs for risk of falling so we end up going separately , no other hospital we have been to (and there have been a few !!) has had the outpatients upstairs . We pay for the National Health like everyone else and considering my fathers condition we hardly use it but I do think some consideration should be made as none of these problems have been of our making - my fathers not well enough to keep trooping up to this hospital .

I have been refused treatment here because I wouldn't have pre-assessment upstairs because I wouldn't leave my father on his own downstairs and for obvious reasons didn't want him going upstairs . The weird thing is I have had this treatment at this hospital before - everything done via the post - IT'S CRAZY .

Finally my father had a bad fall earlier this year and despite going to the GP to ask if they would stitch him up (they wouldn't for fear of being sued - would you believe it ?) we ended up at the hospital where the nurse at the desk was quite prepared to let him go with the cut just being cleaned and dressed - I had already tried to stop the bleeding with some gauze to no avail . Fortunately I said I couldn't clean it and blood was already coming through the gauze so we had a lovely nursing assistant I think her name was Katrina and she did a great job 8 months on you can barely see the scar where she stuck my father together - thank you .

Interested to hear what the hospital has to say - it's not always the staff that are the problem but they really do need to bend the rules occasionally and the appointments system needs a major overhaul .