"Great care at gartnavel hospital and the beatson"

Over the past 17 months I have been operated on three times in Gartnavel Hospital, having been referred there after chemo in the Beatson in November 2010. I still have some chemo side effects, but I am now back at work. I meant to send this letter a while ago but I was too wrapped up in the cycle of operations/clinics/day-nurse visits/recovery period to do so.

First of all I want to thank you and your staff for looking after me so well when I was in wards 4a, 5b(twice ) and 6a.

I work in the street lighting section of the roads department in Glasgow and I frequently get involved with the public when they complain about faults in the street lighting network. I have been there a long time, and I am well aware of how difficult people can be, when their street lights are not working in the long dark winter nights. I am then always interested in improving a customer care technique that works for me to keep my stress levels down, and this brings me to the main point of this letter.

As well as being impressed by the level of nursing care I got when I was in your wards, I was amazed at the customer care/ soft skills capability of all your nurses, some of whom were very young. It took me a very long time to develop reasonable customer care/soft skills in my job, but the staff in your wards are in a class way above me. I felt at times that I was being educated by watching a master class at work. Every nurse has a different personality, but they are all big on positive attitudes and they all have a superb array of top customer care/ soft skills which they use for the benefit of their patients. They easily negotiated the different ages, temperaments and personalities of patients who had different care needs.

As stated earlier, I am now back at work, and I find myself paying particular attention to people skills most days. I have yet to see a standard of people skills/ soft skills anywhere that even approach the level I witnessed in Ward 2B of the Beatson and in wards 4a, 5b) and 6a in Gartnavel Hospital

Thanks again and keep up the good work. Thanks to all staff in these wards.