"Generally my stay at Queen's was a good one but I..."

What I liked

I was at Queen's, Romford, between 11.09.12 to 20.10.12. During this time I was in various departments / wards and, apparently, I was "Out of it" for a while following two operations but while I was awake I found the staff very kind and helpful. As it was my first real visit to a hospital as a in-patient, and I had heard some bad reports about Queen's, I'm glad to say that everything was ok in my case (Even the food was good - My compliments to the chef).

What could be improved

Because different departments, doctors and other staff were involved in my case I sometimes got the impression that they didn't always communicate with each other as one doctor would say one thing then another doctor would come along later, or the next day, and say the opposite. Sometimes I got confused because of the info I was getting from various specialist who seemed to be contradicting each other. It would be better if these doctors / specialist talked to each other and decided on a course of action, etc, before speaking to the patient therefore avoiding any confusion. I must admit that sometimes I got annoyed with some doctors because of the lack of communication between them and in some cases I asked the doctor who was visiting me at the time to go and check with the other doctor who I spoke to previously. The only other problem was during the night shift (8pm - 8am). Most nights the nurses seemed to be short of staff either because of staff illness or staff on their holidays who hadn't been replaced by either other NHS staff or agency staff. This concerned me as if their was a major incident their wouldn't be the staff to deal with it.

Anything else?

I understand that a lot of hospitals in the area are being closed or scaled down (E.G- King Georges in Chadwell Heath) and that Queen's is going to be dealing with patients from a wider area (Redbridge, Havering, Barking and Dagenham etc). I do hope that Queen's will be able to cope with all the extra work.