"Poor Service"

Anything else?

Good Evening,

My father has been under the John Radcliffe for well over 2 years now and I am sad to say that the service seems to be getting worse. This is a very long story that I have tried to keep as concise as possible:

• Run up to October 2011 my father suffers from terrible headaches and through our GP in Burford Oxon we wait for months to even get an appointment.

• October 2011 my father has a lumber puncture and whilst headaches ease for some time they come back and getting him “back into your system” and “on your radar” again was nearly impossible.

• November 2011- April 2013- this is the period I would class as utterly shambolic. Throughout this period we have had numerous administration issues to highlight just a few: notifications of appointments taking months not even weeks let alone days, changes in dates with no notification, letters cancelling appointments when in fact phone calls were received saying the appointments were on, GP chasing multiple times leaving messages with no response. To add to the dismay around the administration of my father when he has been in hospital those treating him haven’t filled us with confidence either, examples include:

• Different doctors giving different information- no consistent message and clearly no communication between each other. Each time we start the process from scratch ultimately wasting both your time and ours. It literally seems like nobody had a clue what is going on and everytime we speak to someone they are baffled by what exists.

• Shoved from pillar to post ( based on the above fact that nobody seems to know what’s going on ) with the most recent visit to hospital only existing because a physiotherapist had the inclination to take it on herself to sort this mess out. We have seen more people in the JR than I can recall and until the most recent visit nobody has shown the attitude I would expect.

• Different doctors having different opinions on whether he has a shunt or not. For me this is the one of the worst things that has occured as surely an X-Ray would give a view that any qualified doctor could give an accurate view on?

• Certain doctors shirking responsibility and not following up on actions that they promised during face to face meetings.

• Members of staff making comments like: “oh I wouldn’t have done that” or “that shouldn’t be the case”

Finally we reach today April 2013 and my father is currently an in patient in the NeuroScience Ward ( West Wing ) perhaps more horrifying than all of the above is that I have just learned that after being in hospital for 24hrs despite his medication being on his notes somehow they have not been administered… Now whilst not life threatening in his case in certain cases I’m sure medication is and the results of such poor attention to detail and lack of competence could easily result in death.

I would like to understand how I can work with the hospital to help you improve the service you offer

Regards