"Staff training on treating customers"

I attended an Outpatient appointment with my daughter in August to be told that it had been cancelled. I was advised a letter had been sent out 10 days ago (it hadn't).

I received a letter 2 days after this advising of the cancelled appointment - bit late - there was obviously some glitch in the system but no one would own up to this. I saw that there were other people turning up to be told their appointment had been cancelled, so it wasn't just me who had not received any letter! . The appointment they offered me was 3 months away!

My daughter has colitis and had had some blood tests taken a few weeks before the appointment at the doctors so I was keen to see someone to discuss the course of action. One of the nurses said she would speak to the consultant who was holding an outpatients clinic but said I would have to wait until the end of this after they had seen 30 patients.

Eventually when it was discovered that another consultant was the right one to see we were taken into a waiting room (bearing in mind we had now been at the hospital 45 minutes after appointment time) We were taken into the other waiting room to read on the notice board that the Dr we were seeing was running 50 minutes late - would have been nice to know this beforehand. So we continue to wait.

The tension in the room was bad and even the nursing staff were complaining about the length of time the doctors were taking. This did nothing but inflame the situation - there was no announcement or apologies, the staff seemed totally unaware or did not care of the predicament of people waiting.

There were a number of elderly patients waiting. The person next to me was called and the staff waited for them to get up. Another patient said that the person couldn't walk and needed a wheelchair. It turned out that the person had been brought in by ambulance and transferred to a chair - surely the staff should notice these things?

After another hour waiting with no information on what was happening we were called to another waiting room - again no explanation of what was happening - it was only when I asked one of the staff who we were seeing that she said it was the consultants registrar. We continued to wait. When we did get to see someone, they didn't even have the decency to introduce themselves or apologise for any wait.

While we were in there one of the nursing staff barged in with some files and announced that there were another two patients to add. How unprofessional and rude and uncaring. You really are made to feel like a number rather than a person! It is inexcusable and does not cost any money for the hospital to put these things right (apart from maybe staff training on how to treat the customers).