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"Unsettling experience"

About: Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital

After being advised by 111 I attend the A&E department at 3:30am after being unable to stop being sick and in severe pain. At 7am I was finally given some codeine and paracetamol to help with this. However it did not work and I was still in a lot of pain. My partner asked if I could have some more and to our dismay was advised for me to leave and go and see my Gp. At 8am I still hadn't been seen by a doctor and it was the beginning of a new shift whilst waiting in the waiting room I witnessed a ward sister demeaning one of her staff members, whom stated she had not had a break all night because of how busy it had been. However she was still shouted out and belittled in front of the patients in the waiting room. This was highly unprofessional and rather concerning. After another attempt was made to ask for more pain relief I was told to wait a little longer until the doctor saw me, in which I agreed. I finally saw the doctor at 11:20am who stated I was too ill to go home and that she had found a bed for me. After the nurse came to check my blood pressure etc she stated she would give me some morphine seeing as the codeine had not worked this was at 11:52am. Another doctor came to see me about 20 minutes after this to check if I had been given pain relief in which I explained I was waiting. It got to 12:52 pm still no morphine so my mother went to enquire as by this point I was screaming with the pain. I finally got pain relief at 13:10 pm in which the nurse started to argue with me that I hadn't waited over an hour for it as it had only been prescribed to me 10 minutes ago. I could not believe I was being called a liar whilst lying crying in pain. After 20 minutes or so of having the morphine I was advised to go home with codeine and return the next day for a scan. I was still in so much pain and couldn't believe I was being sent home even though I had been previously advised I was too ill to be sent home. The next day I returned for my scan and waited in the gynaecology waiting area for the results, when a nurse called my name she stated she was moving me to a different area as it was too ‘happy’ in the waiting area I was already in. After waiting over an hour to see the gynaecologist she checked my stomach however whilst doing this she took a phone call - one hand touching my stomach and other holding the phone and ordered her small cappuccino. I was mortified to say the least!! She then went on to tell me that I shouldn't be bothered that I haven't conceived yet as she was only a year older than me and she didn't have children. I was then discharged from the hospital still in severe pain and feeling like no one really cared what was wrong with me. I do not feel safe about returning to this hospital, later found out that I have a 5mm kidney stone which is stuck and has took nearly 4 months to be diagnosed. This could have been resolved sooner if I had been treated for properly.

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Responses

Response from Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital 5 years ago
Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital
Submitted on 12/06/2018 at 13:42
Published on nhs.uk on 13/06/2018 at 03:35


Dear Sir/Madam,

I am deeply concerned and I can only apologise that your experience with us has made you feel unsettled . After reading your review I would encourage you to continue to work with us. The care and interactions with our staff that you are describing is not what we would expect to find in any of or hospitals. We would like to look into what happened, please could you email us at patient.experience@nhct.nhs.uk and we can begin discussing your review with the members of staff who were on duty at the time you were admitted and also the gynaecologist you met.

We really do appreciate you taking the time to share your invaluable story with us, we would like to act on your concerns as quickly as possible so that we can continue to improve care for our patients.

I am sorry to hear that your pain was caused by kidney stones, I hope you have received the pain relief and medical treatment you need for this.

Please do contact us so we can begin looking into this straight away.

Jan

Janice Hutchinson – Service Improvement Lead

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