"Drop in standards at this hospital"

When I had a hysterectomy seven years ago, I thought the staff were wonderful at the RSH, But I live in Wellington and there is a hospital down the road from me, and it was a long journey for my husband to have made every day. The ward and hospital in general appeared clean and well run. When my mother was ill two years ago, I could see that standards of care were dropping, along with the cleanliness. One evening I went to the bed that she'd occupied for the last 10 days, only to find somebody else there. The lady on the front desk couldn't find out where she'd gone. I spent about ten minutes thinking that perhaps she'd died! It turned out that she'd been moved about 1 in the morning to another ward, which dealt more exclusively with gastro problems. She was only half awake at that time of night and had been left in a ward completely on her own until morning, frightened and confused. I took my son to Unit 33 yesterday at about 6.40 pm on the advice of his doctor. We waited and waited for news of his blood tests, asked the nurses who knew nothing, and waited some more. I went to use the toilet and there was a waste paper metal container with a foot push bar at the bottom that was supposed to open the lid. It didn't work and I had to physically open the top to dispose of the paper towel. The bin was overflowing, and disgusting. A disposable sick container was left on a chair for hours, along with a blanket that had been used to give that person some dignity whilst she was vomiting into it. After about 4 and half hours we were told to go home and come back at 8.30 in the morning. It's a long, long 40 mile round trip at that time of night, especially as the M54 was closed off and it took over an hour to get home, well after midnight before I got to bed. I was back out of the house again at 7.30 to pick him up and get him there on time, getting into work at 9.15 this morning. Ten minutes later he phoned to say his scan wasn't until 2.15 today. Why didn't they ring him at home first thing to let him know that? So it's now 1700 hours, 24 hours since he was told to go to the RSH and he's still in there waiting, still no news and the prospect of yet another 40 mile round journey later on.