"Unacceptable waiting"

I am totally stressed by the lack of care and consideration from the Urology Unit, and have just emailed a formal complaint to the Patient Experience Team. I do not want to repeat it all here, but just wanted to explain how incredibly stressful it is to have no communication at all from the hospital.

The complaint centres around the total lack of communication from the hospital, the lack of understanding the patients needs and concerns and the length of the waiting time in respect of an operation designed to test for cancer.

I cam into the unit at Canterbury in December and had an aborted cystoscopy. I was referred for a heavy sedation waiting list to have the procedure done under general anaesthetic. By 20th January I had heard nothing from the the hospital so I started the process of trying to find out possible dates. This was an arduous and stressful process as I was continuously given wrong extension numbers, promises of call backs that did not happen or numbers with no one at the end of the phone. The patient care was simply appalling.

Eventually I got through to a helpful person dealing with the waiting list who explained that it was not possible to give dates, but that I would need a pre-assessment meeting (not possible before 20 Feb at the earliest) and that there would be up to a three month waiting list for surgery. This would bring the time between the failed cystoscopy procedure and surgery to 5 months.

It is made worse by no information at all coming from the hospital and everything that as happened so far being initiated by myself. Had I not initiated some contact it would now be six weeks from the initial aborted cystoscopy with no information whatsoever coming from the hospital.

So, I think that your patient care is completely failing in respect of communication and understanding of just how stressful is this process, and I think that the waiting list is totally unacceptable where there is a possibility of cancer being found.

Ironically, it was only a couple of weeks ago that I wrote to say how wonderful I had found the endoscopy unit at QEQM. How sad that I cannot do the same with the Urology Unit here at Canterbury.