"Thank you Hillingdon Hospital & Hayes Ward!"

My dear elderly father suffering with dementia for the past 5 years, was admitted to Hayes Ward in November 2017 having fallen in his care home resulting in a serious gash to his head followed by pneumonia.

Hospital is a scary place for a dementia patient but the ward nursing staff, although sometimes run off their feet, could not have been kinder.

There was almost always one nurse sitting in the 4-bedded bay of (very) elderly and confused gentleman, keeping an eye on them. Apart from a couple of matters ie. having important but very brief possible end-of-life talks with extremely busy doctors standing in corridors - and administrative errors where such decisions did not always make it in writing to the medical notes and the wrong name asked for when they called me at home on one occasion -

I cannot, overall, find fault with the ward, medical, nursing staff, the consultant and doctors - or the hospital in general.

Amazingly, after 8 weeks,my dad recovered enough and was quickly found a nursing home placement - all his belongings were packed by the ward staff and went with him & transport arranged and there were not hitches at all. I would just like to place on record my thanks to Hayes Ward Sister and all the medical, nursing and domestic staff for the wonderful work in often challenging circumstances. My parents and grandparents always felt it was a privilege to have the NHS in Britain and I agree wholeheartedly.