"Relative - phobia?"

As a relative of a patient, I would definitely not recommend this hospital after having a relative operated on there and having been on two separate wards.

Staff are very uncooperative with relatives.

They don't answer the phones in the evening - I can only assume that the switch them off - and when they do answer the phones during the day, they won't discuss anything over the phone.

How is that helpful to the relative or the patient, knowing that they have an anxious relative being kept in the dark?

What if relatives find it too difficult to visit (as in my case) or are too elderly or are infirm themselves.

Can't they have some kind of password system or ask what the patients dob is etc?

The day operations office didn't open until 7.20am-ish and ask everyone to sit down.

Then at 7.30am they ask people that are "patients" to queue up and stand behind a bank style waiting sign before signing in.

They then ask them to sit down again before a staff member calls "patients" only to the changing area and asks relatives not to go with them.

As a relative, I'd like to have seen my relative settled into a waiting area/bed prior to an operation to ensure that they were okay, as has been the case in other day care hospitals.

As a patient, I'd like a friendly face to be with me for as long as possible.

Visiting times are poor - 2 hours during the day and only one and a half hours in the evening.

Staff continue to treat patients even through visiting times ie temperature/blood pressure/injections etc.

Yet they are strict on their times and on one occasion when ringing the bell to enquire if my relative was being "released" that day as promised, the nurse said they would find out and come to let me know.

Neither the nurse, nor my relative came to inform me, instead I received a phone call off my relative to say that he wouldn't be sent home that day.

After finding out that I was actually only stood at the end of the ward... he came down to speak to me.

The hospital is far from easy to access - some buses stop at 6pm-ish.

I've taken this up with First buses.

My relative says that staff are okay with patients, however, he has yet to actually get the food that he orders on the form supplied, on a daily basis.

He also says that they are often told one thing - ie when they're going for treatment or for results - just to be left waiting for hours and sometimes days before that treatment actually happens or for results to arrive.

In the meantime, he's had to fast from 24 hours up to 36 hours one one occasion.

Is the surgery at least successful?

That remains to be seen...

I hope so.

I've put "don't know" under "departments" as there isn't an option to choose more than one and my feedback seems universal throughout the departments anyway.