"Confusing and expensive, (car parking)"

What could be improved

Biggest problem, whenever a family member visited and asked the extremely busy nurses or desk staff in the ward for an update of what the status was, what procedures had been done, what any results of tests mean and what will be done next were always met with a rather blank stare and usually, "I'm not sure, let me have a look at the notes and I'll get back to you".

Unfortunately, the responses were often rather vague and seemed to highlight the fact that so many different experts had been involved and that there is no system in place to track and report a patients stay in hospital to their next of kin.

I recommend that a patients "log-book" be introduced. Written in plain English for the benefit of next of kin. Each patient already has a medical "notes" book but these are not designed for the general public.

Introducing a log-book would take the additional pressure from staff in having to read through notes and interpret them so that information can be relayed to the visitor.

Many times it was the case that the patient felt nothing had been done during a particular time frame when in fact many processes had occurred.