"Inpatient at North Devon District Hospital"

I had to wait hours at times in pain because there weren’t enough nurses on shift to cover all their tasks. It was very difficult to get any sleep because it was so noisy. Machines were left beeping unnecessarily because nurses were unavailable to turn them off. I was told countless times that I’d get an update later in the day from a doctor. When I asked a nurse later why I hadn’t seen the doctor I was told they were too busy. The two weekends I was in led to inaction due to the specialist doctors I needed to see not working. I was confidently given information by other doctors which contradicted information I had already received. I was later told by specialists that the general doctors who had advised me at the weekends were wrong. One doctor tried to discharge me home on a Saturday which I had to be very assertive about to prevent what I was later told would have been a very dangerous discharge.

The person next to me with advance dementia was who was objecting to treatment was told by the nurse he had an MCA so they were acting in his best interest. It beggars belief that if this person lacks capacity they he would understand what that meant. We were frequently kept awake by staff talking loudly and laughing overnight, banging things around and seemingly having no regard for the need for sleep.