"Nurses, HCAs and other staff were brilliant but..."

What I liked

Despite the understaffing on Dryden Ward - the nurses, HCAs, cleaners, food servers and other ward assistants pulled together and were prepared to share a joke with us patients so as to lighten the mood.

The staff in the Heart Unit were very professional but also did a lot to set my mind at rest regarding the procedure.

What could be improved

The Doctors had a perfunctory manner and it appears that medical cover overnight is provided by very young staff. Nice enough people but not very inspiring of confidence. For example after a horrible episode involving vomiting and diarrhoea the Doctor came along and asked me what had caused it - nice of him to involve me but my medical knowledge doesn't extend beyond opening a packet of aspirin. The patient next to me saw a series of junior doctors all of whom promised he'd see the chief consultant the following day and this went on for 3 days or more and still the great man failed to make an appearance - very frustrating for him.

The cleaners worked very hard but they were given too much of a workload to be able to do much more than the real basics. There were no cleaners on at night so when a patient made a mess of the toilet floor there was no option other than to close it until the following morning leaving sick patients to queue to use the one remaining facility.