"Aberdeen Maternity Hospital - Room for improvement"

My wife gave birth earlier this month and we had a very mixed experience from Aberdeen Maternity Hospital, the labour team were excellent and the birth went well as did the care immediately afterwards, unfortunately, once we moved to the Summerfield Ward things changed.

The main issues we experience were: 

Poor and inconsistent information from staff.  The story changed depending on who you spoke to and this was very confusing.  

A lack of breastfeeding support despite requesting assistance, a few staff were helpful but some were very unhelpful and simply said "keep trying" and didn't provide any advice on technique or to offer where we may seek further support or assistance.  My wife was incredibly tired after days without sleep and continued failure with breastfeeding, she was on the verge of having an an emotional meltdown and I spilled my heart to a midwife, we were at the point of giving up on the ward and going home because the level of care was so bad and that was an awful situation to be in.  Only at that point were we told that there was a breastfeeding specialist and would we like to speak to her, this was now into our 4th day in hospital.

During one evening, my wife had been trying to breastfeed our baby without her latching, she had buzzed for assistance a number of times but received very poor assistance, the particular person on that evening simply said "its one of these things" then left her alone again in tears.  After 8 hours of constantly trying to breastfeed without success, my wife was genuinely concerned as our baby hadn't fed for around 12 hours, she buzzed and the same person came back and despite my wife being in tears and visibly upset she said "you called?", there was no attempt at emotional care.  My wife pleaded with this member of staff to help as she was really concerned about the lack of feeding and asked if they could help with a formula top up, the response was almost that she'd failed but that they would help her with a top up. The nurse/midwife asked if she'd like to be shown how to cup feed and she said yes, they came back with a leaflet then wheeled our baby away with a further word or explanation. 

My wife was beside herself and didn't know what was happening and was appalled with the attitude of the staff member.  What we'd have expected was a little conversation to say, I can see you're very tired, how about I take your daughter away and feed her this time, you get some sleep for a couple of hours and the staff will look after her, if you need to cup feed her again, lets go through it together.  This member of staff hadn't bothered to introduce themselves, show any empathy in the slightest and was downright unhelpful.

The majority of staff didn't introduce themselves, this is just common curtesy especially if they were appointed to care for the patient.  On our penultimate day in hospital, we discovered that specific midwifes were appointed to patients.   

The buzzers in the ward took a long time to be answered get answered, god forbid there was a serious issue.  It took around 20 minutes on a number of occasions before a staff member appeared.

On our final day, we met our midwife at 7am and requested that we have a conversation about our situation and when we might get home, it wasn't until 3pm that she had time to speak to us.  It then took until 8pm to get our paperwork and be discharged.

We completely understand that we were not the most important people in the ward and some patients require more care than others but the level of care was poor.  We overhead another father complaining and he asked if it was just busy or if was always like this, the midwife told him it was always like this.  It was clear that the ward was understaffed and the staff really struggled to meet patients needs, one member of staff told us that it was a constant struggle.  I don't think the ward was able to provide the level of care which they should have, we weren't expecting one on one care and understand the pressures the NHS is under, the level of care we received was not good.   

There was a serious lack of empathy from some staff, as noted previously, some staff were downright unhelpful.

Some of the staff were excellent, in particular, a young midwife called Cara, a healthcare assistant called Jenny and a Spanish midwife called Christina. 

My wife was not informed of some simple things about the ward like which staff wore which colour (we discovered later that our room didn't have a info sheet but some did), that we could pump and store breastmilk in the fridge ourselves, where we could setup sterilisation tubs or that we had a dedicated midwife per shift.  A simple welcome chat/ pack would have solved a lot of problems and reduced the staff effort.

All in all, it wasn't a good experience and really a struggle, based on our experience and should we have another child, we'd look to another facility within the NHS if the level of care were not to improve in the Summerfield Ward.