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A dreadful experience

Story from nhs.uk

"A dreadful experience"

About: Royal Cornwall Hospital (Treliske)

Since my previous review seems to have been lost here is a repeat.

Admitted with chest pains after a heart attack and stent insertion 2 weeks before in my home town..

The tone was set by the first nurse seen. She was to take some blood and pronounced beforehand that she was "not very good at this".

Then wheeled off to a side room adjoining A&E. Just what you need when stressed out with a heart condition - very high volumes of noise and chaos for hours on end. Just to add to the discomfort the room was also very cold.

The toilet next to my side room was dirty, including lots of electrode stickers in the sink. Seen by many doctors and nurses with little sense of any continuity and next to no communication of their plans. One nurse carried out an ECG and said she would do another in half an hour. She was never seen again. Of the many staff seen in the 12 hours I was in hospital just one, seen for less than 5 minutes, showed any degree of empathy. Given my wife and I were 170 miles from home and 24 miles from our holiday flat we asked about accommodation for my wife at the hospital or nearby should I have to stay in. The staff were completely clueless about this and not remotely interested in helping.

In the 12 hours I was in this hospital the food provided consisted of 2 slices of stone cold toast, a packet of biscuits and a banana.

Please don't respond to this comment with your usual copy/paste platitudes. Now that I'm back in my home town where they really do know how to run A&E and cardiac units I just want to put the whole Treliske Hospital experience behind me..

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Responses

Response from Jess Saunders, Patient Engagement and Feedback Coordinator, Patient + Family Experience Team, Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust 4 years ago
Jess Saunders
Patient Engagement and Feedback Coordinator, Patient + Family Experience Team,
Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust

Submitted on 17/10/2019 at 14:29
Published on Care Opinion at 14:29

picture of Jess Saunders

Hello,


Thank you for resending your review to us. I have had a look back through the stories on here and can confirm it is still there, so apologies if you cannot see it - I will raise this with Care Opinion directly.

Below is the response posted by Jane Michell, Clinical Matron for Emergency Care, last week:

My name is Jane and I am the Clinical Matron for Emergency Care.

Thank you for your post regarding your experience at Treliske hospital, I am so sorry you had a poor experience, and I will do my best to address the concerns you had and to ensure we have some learning from the issues raised.

Regarding the blood you had taken, I would like to apologise for the comment made, everyone has to learn new skills and some staff are more experienced than others, but this should not have been said to you as I am sure you were anxious enough without worrying whether the blood would be taken successfully. I will feed this back to my team.

Unfortunately, the Emergency department is a very noisy department and can appear chaotic when it is busy particularly when it has a high number of patients. Keeping on top of the cleaning can also be a problem-I will feed this back to MITIE who are responsible for cleaning our department to see if there have been any issues recently and also to see if we can increase our cleaning provision.

I am assuming you were moved from ED to the cardiac unit, so you would have encountered another team of nurses and doctors as part of your ongoing treatment and management plan. Although it may have seemed to you that there was a lack of continuity in your care, there would have been an in depth plan documented in your notes. However, this should have been communicated to you so that you were aware of the plan and for that I apologise.

I am also concerned that you felt you were not treated with empathy throughout your stay. This is against our Trust values so I am disappointed that this happened. I will ensure this is fed back to my staff and also the cardiology team.

With regard to accommodation, we do have capacity within the Trust to accommodate relatives, however this is primarily used for relatives of patients in the Critical Care Unit. However, should you have needed to stay in, I am confident the staff on the cardiac unit would have been able to assist your wife in finding some accommodation for the night.

I am not sure why the provision of food seemed to be an issue, food is served 3 times a day and hot drinks provided at meal times and also in between meals. We can also get snack boxes out of hours. I apologise if this was not addressed at the time.

This is not the care that we as a Trust aspire to achieve and I am sorry that you had cause to raise these concerns. Please be assured that they have been taken seriously and will be addressed.

I hope you are recovering well from your illness

Kind Regards

Jane

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