"Keep away if you can!"

What I liked

The place was clean.

What could be improved

My mother was admitted after a fall, in which she dislocated her shoulder and broke her upper arm.

As she was assessed, she went from A&E to a short term ward, to ward 18 for the elderly patients. On phoning each ward in trn it was impossible to get any information, with reasons being that she had just come in to the ward or that they would have to go and get her papers. Even when visitng the ward there was a reluctance to discuus the patients and their well being.

In ward 18 nursing care was perfunctory at best. Staff generally seemed to see the patients as a nuisance, and seemed to spend more time chatting amongst themselves or filling in forms on the computer - there was no feeling that they wanted to help the patients. When helping my mother sit up etc she was often moved on the side of her bad shoulder, obviously causing considerable distress and pain. Also, my mother's alarm call by her bed was missing, and so she could not summon a nurse if she was in discomfort or needed the toilet, but the nurses had left her like that for several days and seemed quite put out when I suggested that they should remedy the problem. Food is of poor quality and frequently cold.

My mother was discharged with only a few hours' prior warning to us in a state where she could not get out of bed unassisted, her hands were shaking so much she couldn't easily do the simplest of tasks, and mentally she was in a confused state and could not remember the beginning of a sentence by the time you had got to the end. Carers were organised for the start, middle and end of the day but the first wouldn't have arrived until several hours after the hospita had taen her home, and in her state of mind she would not have remembered that help was on its way.

Anything else?

Totally unsatisfactory care