"The nursing staff and doctors ..."

What I liked

The nursing staff and doctors on ward 32 in Arrowe Park Hospital simply cannot be praised enough. I have spent the past 6 days back and forth to my terminally ill Mother's bedside at all times of day and night and have been treated with the utmost care and respect. The doctors have given me options on my Mother's care the whole time and given me the chance to approach them at any point to alter that care as I felt the need. The nurses are little short of heroic. Such compassion and respect for both patients and family coupled with professionalism and excellent care that is second to none.

A terribly harrowing experience is being made easier by these wonderful and caring people going above and beyond their remit, for which I will never be able to show my true thanks.

What could be improved

Despite the amazing care we have received, spending so much time within the premises of Arrowe Park Hospital gives you time to take in a lot of things that you may not otherwise have seen. We were very shocked to find that the main entrance lobby is open all night without any security or member of staff there at all. Equally a number of, shall we say less than stable, patients were wandering about in the carpark and outside the lobby at all times of night with patient bracelets and cannulas still attached. Not to mention what could happen if someone decided to walk in off the street with the intention of causing harm?!

Although the area of the Hospital we were in was passably clean, there are some areas of the Hospital, notably the areas between wards that can be extremely dirty. I'm afraid that running a mop over the floor doesn't make an area clean, the window frames in particular were a disgrace. This isn't a picky comment, please don't assume that - things were growing on them... not a good thing in a Hospital one would presume? Sadly the general areas between units and wards are looking exactly what they are: tatty, uncleaned and depressing.

Anything else?

The Doctors and Nurses we have come into contact with have been wonderful, however the cleaning staff leave much to be desired. They are extremely loud (not in the course of doing their job but throwing boxes around and shouting to each other around the ward) and rather disturbingly intrusive. Despite being asked by the Nurses to leave the room my Mother was in alone, as we thought she was about to pass away, they still entered the room several times for no reason and when my Mother rallied slightly, and we had the door open, the 2 cleaning staff on the ward (the man in particular) started appearing frequently in the doorway to have a look at what was going on. Aside from being disconcerting and really rude, it became quite disturbing and upsetting to members of my family. Perhaps if this pair had been less nosey, intrusive and downright disrespectful and actually did their jobs, we wouldn't have an unclean Hospital.