"Knee replacement surgery"

I am writing to express my concerns regarding my experience following my knee replacement surgery at the end of September 2022.

Firstly I would like to thank the staff of the Western Isles Hospital, Surgeon, anaesthetist, theatre staff, doctors, nurses, physio, ot, pharmacy, domestic staff and catering, they are all a credit to your hospital.

On leaving Barra, our plan was to travel by car to Stornoway, have my knee replacement operation, and my husband would come home and I would fly back to Barra on the Tuesday flight where he would pick me up. This had been arranged by patient travel.

My husband had his hip replacement at the start of June and this arrangement above worked well, although his operation was on a Thursday and mine was on a Tuesday.

However, it soon became apparent that this was not the case, I would be discharged on the Thursday or Friday. Thankfully the weather was bad and I didn’t get discharged until the Saturday. I was unable at this point to even sit on a chair for any length of time and had to get assistance lifting my leg onto the bed.

My husband was very unhappy about this arrangement but he was told not to worry I would be fine. My husband collected me from the hospital at 8:00 am on the Saturday morning and the nurses bless them tried their best to get me comfortable in the van supporting my leg with pillows and cushions. I did not manage to get out of the hospital car park before I was in tears with the amount of discomfort. We had to stop regularly to try and ease my pain and taking painkillers did not really help. Unfortunately the lift was not working on ferry either and I could not get out of the van due to sea conditions as water was coming over the car deck. This was a horrendous journey, nine and a half hours of pain and discomfort to get home.

I really don’t know why anyone would think this is acceptable after major surgery.  I think more thought needs to go into coinciding operations with flights for Barra and South Uist patients.

If we have no option but to go to Stornoway, as we understood this to be the case at the orthopaedic clinic in Uist then I think this issue needs addressing.

If we had been in a Glasgow hospital we would be home two and a half three hours tops.

I hope this feedback will be helpful to you and future patients travelling from the Southern Isles.