"Being discharged"

What I liked

Being discharged

What could be improved

Patient Care - I arrived at City Hospital A & E department around 11.30am on Wednesday 3rd February, and was unexpectedly admitted to the SAU ward. When I arrived on the SAU ward I was shown to a bed and a trainee nurse took my details by way of a questionnaire and took my blood pressure. No other staff spoke to me unless I spoke to them first. A few hours after I arrived I asked a nurse for a drink of water, they said I was nil by mouth so wasn't allowed any. I told them I needed to take some pain killers (good job I some tablets in my handbag because I wasn't offered any) and wanted the water to take them with. The nurse came back with a beaker with a very small amount of warm water in it for me to drink. A few hours later I was again refused a drink of water. By this time I had been in the ward about 5 hours. After being on the ward for around 8 hours I was taken to the theatre for an operation. The theatre staff were really nice. After the operation I was taken to ward D25. Around 1.00am in the morning, by which time I'd been in the hospital over 13 hours, I asked a nurse if there was anything I could have to eat (I did have my own jug of water by this time), they said "There's bread". Because of the operation, walking wasn't very comfortable, but to get something to eat and a hot drink, that once the drip was detached from the catheter as I requested, I found my way to some vending machines in the A & E dept.

I was in the hospital for over 17 hours before I was offered a hot drink and over 21 hours before I was eventually offered anything to eat. The nurses weren't busy, they both managed to take it in turns to grab 40 winks in an empty side ward. I'm sure even the inmates up the road from there in Winson Green Prison are treated a lot better and are fed more than bread and water.

Anything else?

I asked for a esomeprazole tablet as I suffer quite badly from acid reflux but was expecting to be given an alternative or maybe even something for heartburn as I realise not all tablets are going to be available. But to my amazement I was give a curt answer of "It's not been prescribed so you can't have anything" I assumed access to my medical file was available, if it was it would have shown that originally I was prescribed esomeprazole by a consultant at the same hospital.

Also a little bit of information of the procedure I had done would have been nice instead of being told if I wanted to know anything I needed to speak to my own GP. I phoned and spoke to my GP the week after I was discharged about going back to work, but he still hadn't received the notes from the hospital by the time I phoned.