"Concerns about nursing care"

I underwent a bladder operation last month.

Staff in pre-op ward 8A were excellent. The anaesthetist and his nurse were excellent as were the nurses in the post operative recovery room.

Thereafter things went progressively downhill. The nurses in 'recovery' were baffled that no one in ward 11, where I was to be located, would answer the phone to arrange for my transfer. Eventually they did manage to get this sorted out and I was taken to the ward by a nurse who I felt was very grumpy. They totally ignored any of my (lighthearted) attempts at conversation.

On arrival at my designated bed I was told to get myself off the trolley on to the bed, and this not only surprised me, but caused me some pain as I had a catheter inserted to drain my bladder, and the movement caused a very high degree of discomfort. When I expressed my discomfort, and suggested that the catheter may have become kinked during transfer, the nurse again totally ignored me and another nurse said that I probably had a "low tolerance to pain".

There was a more senior nurse on the ward who, along with two or three other staff were engrossed in celebrating a nurse's birthday with food at the nurses station directly opposite my bed. It seemed to me that the only time this senior nurse took any interest in myself or any other patient on the ward was when I used my mobile phone to contact my wife - as no one else had attempted to do so - to let her know I had been through my procedure. This particularly riled me as only minutes before this the cakes and party snacks been very quickly stuffed in a filing cabinet when a manager or senior nurse had passed through the ward.

Worse was to follow, but this only came to me retrospectively, as didn't really grasp the significance of it until a few weeks later. As part of my post operative procedure I underwent chemotherapy administered directly via the catheter inserted in my bladder. When this procedure ended, and the catheter and chemotherapy liquid drained, the nurse came to my bed and dumped a bottle of regular cleaning fluid on the floor and told me that this was to be used to clean the toilet bowl whenever I used the toilet. When I asked what was to be done with the spillage from the chemotherapy which had saturated areas of my surgical gown, the nurse completely ignored me again and disappeared off to join their colleagues enjoying the birthday celebrations.

I have very recently experienced problems with infections etc related to this procedure, and I suspect that much of it is more to do with how some of the nurses care for people in ward 11 than it has to do with the actual operation I underwent on that particular day. Time will tell.