Chelsea and Westminster Hospital 2017-06-16 Person 1 5 0

We felt that doctors did not communicate well with us, or with the nurses administering the drugs - if the doctor told us that certain meds were to be discontinued, we found ourselves telling the nurses before they gave them to our child. We found it very hard to follow up to discuss prescribed medication - the doctor on our discharge papers had not actually ever met our child, despite us having his name on the papers twice, over two admission phases, totally five overnight stays. There seemed no culture of any individual responsibility, to the extent that we felt that this was almost the opposite - no one is responsible, the buck is endlessly passed up or down or across the chain, between medics/ surgeons/ nurses. We had no central, wise advisor in the midst of many. It cost our son many extra days in hospital, because no one listened to our past medical history and advice from the surgeon in south africa - a week later, after another debilitating course of antibiotics and a radioactive scan, we had the revelation that they had not checked for C.Diff despite my communicating this recommendation from the SA surgeon...we were eventually discharged with this diagnosis. I believe that a stronger culture of named case handlers would have helped us enormously. We did have some good nurses and we do realise that there is a lot going on, but these issues affect safety and we felt that we did not know who to talk to about our case, or to discuss the conflicting advice from surgeons, medics, nurses who came to advise us, usually without giving full names. When we finally tried to trace the doctor who gave the final prescription for 2 weeks metronidazole (to ask if one week would be enough), we were told that it would be well nigh impossible to find out who had prescribed that, as there would likely be no paper trail back to the junior doctor who had suggested it. How can this be a safe system? The staff nurse on the ward was certainly not a clear point for advice when we needed it, having been discharged.