"Care at the Royal Hampshire wasn't up to scratch"

My husband has just spent 7 days in this hospital and the care left a lot to be desired.

He had just been into a private hospital for two major operations, he was discharged from the private hospital on the Friday and the following Monday had to go back to the NHS hospital, and the care he had at this private hospital was beyond what we expected, then to have to go into the NHS hospital - you could definitely see the comparison.

He had constant and instant attention in the private hospital but he could be waiting for up to an hour for a nurse to attend him and their impersonal approach was unbelievable.

On the day of his release the doctors came round and discharged him at 12.30pm but it was nearly 4.00pm before we actually got out of the hospital. It took the nursing staff all this time to get his medication he needed on discharge and to arrange a wheelchair because he was so weak he was unable to walk.

As to parking - well there is not a lot to be said, I am disabled and frequently couldn't find a parking space. There were only 4 disabled parking bays at level B, this was the nearest to the ward he was on and if you have an outpatient appointment you need nearly a hour prior to your appointment to find or have to wait for a vacant parking space.

Also whenever he has had to have an outpatient appointment you get to the appointment by the time they state but you never ever get into see the consultant or nurse at this time, it can take up to an hour or more before you get to see anyone.

As to the meals, again for someone who hasn't been able to eat for 4 weeks, not to mention being diabetic, the choice of meals is restricted and not very tempting. They have tried to go more gourmet and I think a lot of patients don't know what some of the meals are meant to be. My husband could only eat very soft food and most days it was only mashed potatoes and peas and there was nothing to go with this and as you can see this type of meal isn't very good for someone recovering from 2 major stomach operations not to mention the duodenal ulcer that he was in this hospital for.

If we could have found a bed at the private hospital we would have done so but we were unable and therefore he had to put up with this NHS hospital.

On one of the nights there were only 2 nurses on duty to cover 28 patients and my husband, because of his illness suffering from diarrhoea, he had to wait over an hour in this mess before one of nurses condescended to come and see to him. On a previous occasion the night time nursing staff shut themselves away in an office listening to the wireless and drinking coffee, it took a more mobile patient to go and knock on this door and get a nurse to attend to a patient.

Don’t get me wrong - there were quite a few very good nurses who cared extremely well for the patients, but these were far outstripped by the majority who didn't seem to have any patient care as their priority.