"Unable to contact family member currently in hospital"

Thank you so much for taking the time to share this feedback. I am so sorry to hear that your relative has not had a positive experience with their hospital stay so far and please be assured this is not the standard of care we would aim to provide. I appreciate how difficult it is not being able to visit and fully recognised how important other forms of communication are for families. In order to look into the difficulties you are describing and to help support better communication with the ward and with your relative, I would be grateful if you could contact our feedback team with more information such as your relative's name and which ward they are currently in. This will help us resolve this matter quickly for you.

Thanks again for taking the time to share your feedback and I am sorry that this has not been positive on this occasion.

Best wishes

Julie Greenlees

Clinical Care Group Manager

Unscheduled Medicine

Dear "Tinker 82".

Thank you for your feedback and sorry not to respond until today. I spoke with the manager of the ward your relative is in because, as Julie says, this is just not the level of support we would expect you or your family to experience. The ward team are committed to helping people stay in contact with their families and in keeping families updated. However, this has clearly not been happening consistently for you so we have done the following to try and address this:

1. Each shift of staff, ending their shift are reminding the next shift of the ipads and the need to arrange times for virtual visiting or phone calls. Nurses on the incoming shift who know how to work the Ipads are being identified as the "go to people" for anyone new to the area so when a call is needed it can be arranged with ease.

2. The manager for the area is exploring the phone issue and will make sure cordless phones are available to the team so they can be given to patients to take family calls.

3. The team are being asked to provide daily updates and our person-centred care group are working on some guidance for staff to follow so every person gets a comprehensive and consistent update. so your feedback will hopefully help others too. We are doing this because we recognise how important this communication is, particularly when you cannot visit in person.

I hope these actions will help your situation but if they don't please get in contact with me and I am happy to continue to liaise with team to get an issues resolved.

Lastly, thank you for your kind words towards the team, they will appreciate that and if I have missed anything and you want to get in contact please don't hesitate - we need to get this right for you and your relative. I hope they recover soon so you can be together again.

Warmest regards,

Dr Deborah Baldie, Senior Nurse, Research and Development and Interim Operational Lead for Care Opinion.