"One nurse was the only person ..."

What I liked

One nurse was the only person that showed any sort of care or consideration.

What could be improved

I waited for over 2 hours in the Day Care waiting room even though I arrived in good time for my appointment. I then had a further wait of 1 hour on the ward and when I was finally taken to the theatre, the doctor said I was the wrong patient and I was shoved back onto the ward again. All this time my daughter was waiting in the car park running up a considerable bill which I think is immoral for ANY hospital to charge for parking. I was at the point of getting dressed and going home but the nurse who was looking after me convinced me to wait a bit longer and she went to tell the doctor I was about to leave. By some miracle, I was then taken to the theatre, given a general anaesthetic and as far as I know, the procedure was carried out. I do not remember being discharged from the ward nor being told the results and I wasn't given any form of written advice that I could refer to when I fully recovered from the anaesthetic . My daughter who is my next of kin, collected me and she wasn't informed of anything either so I was left wondering what was found (if anything) and what would be the next step in my treatment. I had to contact the hospital and have them fax over the report to my GP. I then had to make an appointmant purley to find out what I should have been told by the hospital anyway. Unfortunately, the report was not up to date and did not include any information about the procedure at Epson but there was other information from a earlier appointment for the same problem at St Helier that I found useful and reassuring. It obviously shows that the level of communication between the medical staff and patient is almost non existent whether it be why you are waiting so long to what they have found or what is the next step in the course of your treament. I feel that my basic rights to know just exactly what is going on is being seriously restricted by the extremely poor standard of communication I have witnessed so far.

Anything else?

To add to the confusion, I have now received another letter from the hospital from a different department with a different consultant giving me a further appointment. In this very short letter it gives no information why the appointment has been made and what is the evidence that warrants further investigation. It would appear that the policies adopted by this hospital regarding staff/patient co-operation requires some radical changes to ensure the people who's lives are possibly about to alter substantially due to illness are actually aware of what is going on.