"Rude abrupt nursing staff"

My elderly grandmother was recently admitted to the Countess. Throughout her stay we found that it extremely difficult to obtain information from the nursing staff during our visits. This was mainly due to generally rude and abrupt manners. Whilst some nurses were nicer than others, we we’re always left feeling like they had something more important to do than talk to us. We struggled to get information from either my Nan, as she is deaf and at times was confused, or from Granddad as her next of kin, as he was also deaf, and too polite to say if he didn’t understand what he had been told.

The worst episode was this one time during her stay when she became extremely confused. She was calling all my family at 3 4 in the morning begging to be let out. When we went to visit her the next day we found her in a state of undress, with her lower half exposed to all and sundry. All of this behaviour was completely out of character for our Nan. We were unlucky enough to approach this particularly rude nurse that day, whilst expressing our concerns about her unusual behaviour we were reproached with the only thing they can do is take her phone off her! We reassured this nurse that we didn’t mind her calling, we just wanted to ensure they were aware this wasn’t typical behaviour as we didn’t want them to assume she had some form of dementia. We asked why she had deteriorated and had been started on a drip since our last visit. We were fobbed off with some medical jargon, which we then had to google to understand what was meant.

Whilst we tries our best to be understanding of the pressures these nurses must be under, some common courtesy really wouldn’t go amiss!