East Surrey Hospital 2015-01-30 Person 2 5 0

My overall experience of the maternity services at East Surrey is that the clinical staff are for the most part great, but are very much let down by abysmal administration processes. For antenatal clinic appointments I have never waited less than half an hour after my given appointment time, often much longer; I have received notification of appointments days after they were due to take place; I've had to chase and chase for details of some dates and procedures, or been given completely the wrong information. On top of that, while most of the clinical staff are fantastic, I have also come across aggressive midwives, v uncaring consultants (who picked up my notes and read them for the first time while walking into my appointment, thus knowing nothing about me) and a general environment where everyone gives their own individual personal opinion of how my care should progress, which is often completely contradictory to previous advice and very upsetting. I am due to have my baby at East Surrey next week and I am 50/50 about what to expect from them given the very patchy experience I have had so far. I understand that the NHS, and its staff, are under lots of pressure, but some of the problems I've experienced are down to attitude and could easily be helped, and are not the result of poor resourcing.