Nursing lapses

My HUSBAND was referred to hospital with low blood pressure and a fast heartbeat.

It was 20 minutes before he had his blood pressure, temperature, etc, competently taken and was transferred to a cubicle, then given a bed in a ‘waiting’ ward and attached to a drip, as he was dehydrated.

A nurse introduced herself, but then returned to her computer. During our two-hour wait, my husband needed to go to the toilet, after which I noticed the drip was no longer working and approached the desk. The nurse (at the computer) told me she’d forgotten to re-connect it. Had I not been there, who knows how long he’d have gone without fluids?

We were eventually told there was a bed available where my husband would be seen by a doctor, but when we arrived it wasn’t ready. My husband had to stand while a nurse washed the bed and chair. My sister and I stayed with him and after another hour I asked at the nurses’ station when a doctor might be coming. I was told my husband was still in triage.

‘No, he isn’t,’ I said, ‘he’s over there.’ It seems the computer still said ‘No’, but eventually agreed that he was where he was.

‘Obs’ were taken and if a doctor had seen him then, he might have been allowed to go home, freeing up a much-needed bed.

There was no chart at the end of my husband’s bed. The nurse who took his ‘obs’ wrote them on a scrap of paper, but when she went to enter them on the computer she exclaimed: ‘This computer isn’t working!’

Despite being dehydrated, my husband wasn’t given any water.

I asked at the station and one nurse got up to fetch some, but was told by a more senior nurse to finish her work on the computer first. Unbelievably, the computer took precedence over the patient.

There were three nurses at the station, one gossiping, one eating crisps and the other drinking cola. They could easily have fetched some water for my husband.

Well into the afternoon, with our car park fee mounting, a doctor arrived and told us my husband had to have a blood test before being allowed home — but the nurses weren’t told and had to bleep the doctor to confirm it.

It was now around 7pm, with car park charges standing at £13.50. We waited another three hours, asking for the results of the blood test.

When a doctor eventually saw my husband, he said that he should stay overnight so they could monitor him. I pointed out that nobody had been monitoring my husband for all the hours he’d been in the ward, despite there being people at the nurses’ station all day. They’d all been on the computer.

I’m angry to see such incompetence. I know the NHS is in crisis, but these nurses are being paid and aren’t doing the simplest tasks which would help to quicken things up. They need a good leader to check they’re running the ward efficiently.

Name and address supplied.