"Appalling hospital - going private is best..."

This hospital is appalling. The biggest talk in the UK is the NHS and how it’s failing it’s people - and that, without a doubt, is true here at Southend. The manners and inexperience of some of the staff is mind blowing!! The miscommunication between them is shocking. Even after having resorted to going private for my 3 month old daughter and her possibly very serious condition, they are unable to help us with her scans and information for her new surgeon to see; we could be waiting for them up to 20 days, so the surgeon has decided to do everything again - huge costs! At a 15 minute private consultation in London - the knowledge, confidence and manner of the doctor was exactly what it should of been from the beginning! This hospital failed to listen to me as the Mother when I had taken my daughter in previously stating something was wrong. They just went on to take several X-rays, exposing her Young self to radiation and not even examining her properly. I was so stressed by our stay in the Neptune ward that I recorded a lot of what was said and went on just to show my daughters father the chaos, and it’s so sad to listen back even now!! The consultant will tell you one thing and the nurses another. They will leave a young baby who is NBM with her IV machine beeping for 20 minutes, only coming in when I finally managed to find someone to come help. They won’t ever offer help for the parent there with the child and all they do is talk about handover morning and evening. It’s their reason for why most things can’t happen, etc. These are just the minimal problems we faced! Now, spending our savings on very expensive private care is hard but more than worth it... rather than going back to this hospital. We Will NEVER put any of our children through this unprofessional, lack of communication chaos again! I really hope and pray we won’t ever need to go to this hospital again, unless it’s to give birth as the maternity ward is the only part of the hospital with some decency left and people who care. So sad...