Having been told that a nurse would be with me at all times in the recovery room after my operation, the nurse looking after me spent most of their time ignoring me and generally laughing and joking with other nurses and when I turned to them to request more pain relief, they just walked off. I was transferred to a ward and given an oxygen mask as my levels were low. I was also attached to a mobile monitoring machine to monitor my pulse, blood pressure and oxygen saturation. Later in the evening a nurse came to check on me, only to find that the oxygen mask had not been attached to anything (and therefore useless), and the monitoring machine had not been plugged into a mains socket and so it's battery had fun flat, meaning that it had not been monitoring me at all. I was then given food that was placed out of reach , and having just had an operation, I was not able to get up to fetch it. And so it went on..... The man in the next bed was admitted overnight and allowed to have an unlimited number of friends come and go (chatting away on their mobile's as they did so), making sleeping an impossibility. It was only when I was discharged that I found out that free earplugs were available at reception, only nobody had told me. The admissions staff, the surgeon and the anaesthetists were thorough and professional, but you can forget post-op care. As for the statistics written on the board at the nurses station - I can prove that they are not all accurate. As I left the ward, I noticed the date that had been recorded for the last patient fall on the ward was some weeks prior. However, I had seen the nursing staff rush to pick up a man that had fallen to the floor just the previous day. I would make an official complaint but I've tried that sort of thing in the past. All I got as a string of sound-bytes, carefully scripted non-apologies, figures for this and that and a commitment to improvement worthy of a politician. My advice? Have your operation and then get out as fast as possible.
"Everything was fine until I reached the recovery..."
About: Conquest Hospital Conquest Hospital St. Leonards - on-Sea TN37 7RD
Posted via nhs.uk
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