"Poor communication within chemo unit"

My mum has been having chemo and every visit has been difficult. The staff didn’t seem to know about at least one aspect of the plan that the consultant told us would happen. This was in letters to us but the staff didn’t seem to have read these. We’d have to explain this, then they’d say they didn’t know about it, then they’d come back and say we were right. Sometimes we needed to follow up with phone calls to the consultant afterwards as well.   My Mum’s case is complex and rare but we always felt they were trying to put her into what would normally happen for someone with her type of cancer rather than becoming familiar with her case and the consultants plan.

The staff were all friendly and caring but we are all now extremely distressed about each visit, dreading what will happen next and we’ve thought about asking to move to another unit.   The thing is, we know this service can do better than this. We’ve seen positive comments from others and we believe that if communication was better within the team and between the teams caring for my Mum most of the problems we’ve experienced wouldn’t have happened. Gateshead chemo unit, you can do better than this.