"The Good The Bad and the Disgraceful April 17 2014"

I have been a regular attender at this hospital as an outpatient and an emergency admission since 1999. On Thursday evening I was appalled at the state of A & E which had deteriorated considerably in my view with the addition of the portakabin styled "Start Chamber" When I was formally admitted after a wait on an ambulance trolley for some time (around 7pm Thursday 17th) the unit seemed to be considerably understaffed and consequently under a great deal of pressure. It took over 8 attempts for the team to get one blood sample from me. The doctor made a decision to transfer me to the AM unit as soon as a bed could be made available. I was left on an A & E trolley in the AMU corridor until after 1am then transferred to a ward bed. Now the reason I was moved so prematurely had a lot to do with conforming to target times. How do I know this? Because the A & E sister was going on about it to the charge Nurse who did a good job. At one point she instructed him in my presence to move me immediately so they could be seen to be doing things on time. The charge nurse refused, because he was the only senior nurse in the A & E unit at the time and he was not going to leave his other patients unattended! He then got more flak from her boss BTW the doc dumped an important letter from the cardiology guys about me in the rubbish with 7 canela needles which were left Why is the management philosophy geared to neglecting patients at the expense of ticking boxes to satisfy report criteria??? Now let's turn to the good stuff The night shift crew at the Acute Medical Unit were brilliant. Led by an excellent staff member and with super support from the ICU nurse I could not have been looked after better. In addition to looking after me and all their other charges they also had to cope with an unsettled patient who had assaulted medical staff and was being calmed by security when I arrived. Their management of him was excellent again - non confrontational, endlessly patient, and caring. I got a good view of this chap's wanderings and physical assaults on hospital equipment while I was parked in the corridor Sadly I have some not so good stuff to mention when comparing the day shift team with the night guys . This team seemed to have more political priorities than medical care ones For me worrying about things like ensuring that people of the same sex were together in one ward are less important not more than direct medical care. Anyway so the first thing that happened at 8am was musical beds before breakfast. Then beds had to be made. The phrase obnoxious attitude springs to mind This hospital does not compare with the one I've been admitted to in the past. Thank goodness there are still a few good signs A & E that I witnessed gets about 1 out of 10 for team work 8 points to the charge nurse. Night shift guys in AMU 10 out of 10 Day shift team in AMU 7 Tony Maund