"Unprofessional; lack of medical expertise; ugly..."

What I liked

Being able to get appointments quickly.

What could be improved

I had physiotherapy at this hospital to treat a shoulder injury. However, after 8 sessions my injury is no better and my shoulder was reinjured. The reinjury occurred because the physiotherapist was sure that the injury had gone away completely. She told me I could now use my arm as normal and do what I like. However, as soon as I did that the shoulder was injured again. Clearly she had been unable to rehabilitate and check progress. After the reinjury she seemed angry/frustrated and blamed me for it and also her tone of voice and overall communication were inappropriate. She then sent me to another physiotherapist in the same hospital. First he said that I had a tendon injury. However, after 2 sessions of acupuncture and some medication he made no attempt to rehabilitate this. On our last appointment he performed a stretching routine and said that the muscle had just been tight and that the tightness is now gone. When I said that there was still a lot of pain and I needed to ice every night, he insisted there was nothing wrong and that I should use my arm as normal. When I said that I didn't have the strength for this and that every little resistance brought pain he just told me to see how I get on and give him a call in 2-3 days' time. I have never been treated with such contempt and my intelligence being undermined this way before. There is a knowledge issue at the physiotherapy department together with an attitude issue. It is a money-making factory and I don't think they could have helped me if they wanted to. I had the same injury in the other shoulder many years ago, which was treated with success: full rehabilitation and no return of the injury.

Anything else?

There was no attempt on behalf of the physiotherapists to get to the bottom of my problem and only general strengthening exercises for the shoulder were provided in the first 4 sessions. After this no more exercise was given, no attempt to rehabilitate, especially after reinjury, was made. The exercises were not always given in writing and I couldn't remember them when I went home and some of them were just shown to me without trying them out during the session. Even though they charge for 30min appointments most of my appointments lasted 10-20 minutes. They also referred me to an orthopaedic within the same hospital but they refused to except his diagnosis (pinching of the supraspinatus muscle) and the first physio also told me that I had gone to the "wrong" doctor (not her friend). She didn't seem to think that all specialists in the hospital are of an equal medical expertise. Orthopaedic appointments were 20 minutes late each time. The consultant had not received the referral letter from the physio; he then had not received the mri results and the physio had also not received the consultant's findings, which meant that a big part of the appointments was spent going over the same thing. I tried to buy medication from the hospital pharmacy but they didn't have the prescribed 2 weeks' supply in stock and I had to go back, which was very inconvenient. When I tried to pay for the medication I was told that the accounting/payments team had gone home before it was time to. After my experience at the BMI I have changed my mind that private healthcare equals good quality healthcare.