"My brother's story"

I feel compelled to tell my story of a recent experience when visiting my brother.

My brother was involved in a road traffic accident a long way from home (Wick). We received a call from the Police to advise of the accident and that he was on his way to hospital. We were obviously extremely anxious as it was difficult at that point to get a clear picture of what his injuries were as staff at Caithness Hospital were trying to stabilise him.

We are a very close family and wanted to leave Fife to travel to Wick asap however, the A9 was closed due to snow so we had to wait till the next morning. As I'm sure you can imagine it was  a stressful night.

We were called at 5am by staff in Caithness to advise they were transferring him to Raigmore Inverness. He had quite a few significant injuries so we made the decision to travel up to Inverness as soon as possible. It was important to us to support my brother as we know that he would be scared and would be looking for his family to be close by. Staff in Caithness Hospital were fantastic in advising us of the injuries and what the plans were. When he left Caithness they called to advise he was going to Ward 6a Raigmore.

After a 3 hour drive with my elderly mother we arrived in Inverness. My brother had just arrived by ambulance before us. He could not be airlifted due to his injuries so had to endure a 2.5hr ambulance journey obviously still in a lot of pain.

I felt the attention my brother received from the minute he arrived on the ward in terms of assessment and care planning was timely. However, the attitude and behaviour of a few staff members was disgraceful. Approaching staff on the ward was an uncomfortable experience. Given the circumstances and the distance we had travelled we had expected staff to empathetic and compassionate towards us. However, we were faced with defensive body language and rudeness. Almost like we were a nuisance.

I have worked as a senior nurse for many years and would be appalled if my team treated any family the way we were treated. There was no evidence of person centred care and I was surprised to see very restricted visiting times. At the end of evening visiting we decided to book a hotel as there was discussion that my brother may need surgery that night. There was no way we could travel back home knowing this.

On leaving at the end of evening visiting we were lucky enough to come across a friendlier member of staff. She advised to call in the morning for an update.

My brother has asked me to add to this post and express his disgust at the way he was treated by night shift staff. However, he would like to thank one nurse who he said was amazing.

I was sad to have had this experience particularly with members of my own profession. The staff in question lacked care and compassion and showed no evidence of understanding person centred care. Families are an important part of care and I hope they reflect and learn from our experience.