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Care Opinion

Staff being scary and weird

Posted By disabled visitor

"Staff being scary and weird"

About: Ninewells Hospital / General Medicine

(as a service user),

What a weird hospital!

 I’d sat at a table put my walking stick on the table so as to be sure it did not fall on the floor and a staff member told me to move it away as they felt threatened by it. Really strange as the stick is an inanimate object and cannot move without a physical input, so it seems what they were really stating is that they felt threatened by the owner of the stick. The incident does not say much for the mental capacity of this person if they felt threatened by objects that cannot move by their own accord.

I kept the stick in my hand which is ironic as now I had a potential weapon in my hand but this staff member did not seem to recognise that. Being a seriously disabled person who cannot reach the floor unaided I really need the stick to be close to hand. If it had fallen to the floor I would really struggle to get it without help and possibly incur further injury. This must be the weirdest case of intimidation and bullying by hospital staff ever experienced.

So, people going to the hospital should be aware of the threat of being evicted from the hospital by security staff for having walking aids or any other inanimate objects. So much for NHS heroes or as it is in this case weirdoes if this is an example of NHS policies.

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Responses

Response from Meg Park, Lead Nurse, Medicine Directorate, NHS Tayside 3 years ago
Meg Park
Lead Nurse, Medicine Directorate,
NHS Tayside

Submitted on 11/02/2021 at 14:02
Published on Care Opinion at 14:02

Thankyou for your feedback.

I would like to apologise to you for the experience you describe and to assure you this sort of interaction is not in keeping with the standards of person centred care we expect from our staff.

In order to explore your concerns further I would invite you to make contact with myself,meg.park@nhs.scot or via the Feedback Team: tay.feedback@nhs.scot to provide some more details around the location/ department and staff involved. This will enable us to provide feedback to the correct department and provide you with further information in relation to the feedback you have provided us.

We take all feedback seriously and endeavour to provide learning across many staff groups so we are grateful for you alerting us to this issue.

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Update posted by disabled visitor (a service user)

The incident was denied and as I have found NHS always takes the side of their staff even when there is witnesses. Along with that, I've never seen NHS Tayside accepting responsibility for their employees so what's the purpose of raising the issue further. responses have usually been worded in a manner to say they are sorry I did not find you standards are of a basic standard but never taking ownership of their own failings..

Response from Meg Park, Lead Nurse, Medicine Directorate, NHS Tayside 3 years ago
Meg Park
Lead Nurse, Medicine Directorate,
NHS Tayside

Submitted on 17/02/2021 at 16:37
Published on Care Opinion at 17:18

I am sorry that your previous experience has been as you describe.

I want to assure you that if you get in contact with me to discuss this further then we will work hard to understand what happened and ensure we address the issues that you experienced so that we learn and improve other patients' experiences.

Please just use the contact details that I have given above but I will respect your wishes if you would prefer to leave it as is. Thank you again for raising this with us.

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