"Some areas need to be improved"

I have been a patient in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary 3 times since May this year to have angiograms done and two of those visits were upsetting. I was transferred from Forth Valley on each occasion.

The first visit I was put in a side room and left on my own having recently suffered a heart attack and was very frightened. I had to request my medication. The nurse was not happy. The nurse left and came back to inform me the pharmacy was closed and asked if I could do without. I told the nurse no as I suffered from epilepsy. The nurse went to another ward to find me tablets when the nurse came back, the nurse said maybe I will go to sleep now. I was not given any of the new heart medication I had been started on in Forth Valley and was too scared to ask.

The second visit the nurse could not have been nicer it didn’t matter I arrived about 3am. The nurse even offered me a cup of tea and asked if I would need transport home.

The third visit, the evening senior member of staff never introduced themselves. The nurse just read out the medication. When I told the nurse I didn’t get one of the tablets that was mentioned. The nurse told me I did now. When I tried to talk to the nurse about it, the nurse said that’s the way its done here.

On going to sleep the first night the light on the empty bed opposite was on I asked a nurse to turn it down as I couldn’t sleep the senior nurse turned it back on saying they were expecting a patient, the person arrived and the curtains were pulled.

The following day after my angiogram, which was very distressing, I mentioned to a nurse the needle had come out of my arm the senior nurse walked by and asked what i'd done now. Everyone on the ward was complaining about this one nurse. This nurse also told an elderly person they would have to find their own transport home yet I know from previous stays transport home is available as I got transport home after my second and third stay.

I feel being transferred from another hospital is stressful enough but when you arrive in Edinburgh it feels as if you are an outsider. You are there because you have a heart condition which itself is scary enough. I know an angiogram is a routine procedure to the hospital but not to an individual. There should also be specific guidelines of the transport available. Being taken away to a place you don’t know to have treatment then told to make your own way home is a very scary thought especially when you have enough to worry about.

After my stay at ERI I was speaking to someone else that had stayed on the same ward about the rude nurse they asked what they were called and it turns out it was the same nurse. Areas needing addressed are: - Understanding, Information, Medication, Transport, Certain Staff Attitude.