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"Hospital feedback"

About: Arrowe Park Hospital

I got referred to be admitted to the hospital by my GP as my blood pressure/temp looked very iffy and the GP said that although they could give me antibiotics there and then it would be best for me to go and get checked out in hospital. I went in and was given a bed in an acceptable amount of time, which was good, however from that point on very little happened. The nurses were clearly concerned about being about to get the canulla in and instead of getting someone experienced in to do this the first time round 3 different people had 5 different attempts to get it in, which was absolute agony. The nurses were also very unsympathetic stage, as I cried out in pain once one said "I take it you haven't had children" (I assume this bizarre comment was a remark about how much child birth hurts, but who really knows!). After this so called essential canulla was finally in it then took them a further three hours to actually use it, I was promised some codine for pain relief, but that never happened, despite me asking twice. By the end of the evening and after finally getting some IV antibiotics I was keen to go home, but the consultant was insistent I should stay and promised me the ENT specialist would be seeing me the next morning. To the consultants credit they did let my partner stay in with me as I was very anxious, this is one of the few positive things I can take away from this experience. Later on in the night I was moved to a ward where the lights were off and I could get some sleep, though unfortunately this never happened as I was on a ward with a old lady that was yawping all through the night. Feeling very worse for wear the next morning I patiently waited for this promised ENT specialist to show up, though predictably, this didn't happen. At 11 I asked the nurse if my take home medication was prepared, I was so exhausted, and also suffering with crohns disease, desperately desperately needed sleep. The nurse went and asked the doctor and shortly after came back to inform me that as I suspected the ENT doctor would not be here this morning but probably "at some point today" they also relayed that they would not be giving me any take home medication as I was leaving against medical advice and I also wouldnt get a discharge letter. I don't have a medical degree but everyone knows you should always complete a course of antibiotics so for a hospital to put you in that situation if you don't tow their line is disgusting, if they had their way I'd have been left in a worse state than if I'd have just taken meds from the GP in the first place! After some arguing they finally handed me over my antibiotics, but apparently "only because they had been ordered already". Terrible experience, no one actually told me what my diagnosis was until about an hour before I left, and I'm pretty sure one of the standards of care is allowing patients choice, which i most certainly wasn't.

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