Northwick Park Hospital 2018-08-17 Person 4 5 0

I was treated brilliantly and had total trust in the staff who are amazing professionals working in such challenging under-resourced environments - but they never let it impact how they treated me as a patient and I am so thankful to them for that. The issue is there aren’t ENOUGH staff/resources. I was held in recovery for 3-4 hours longer than necessary, firstly because there weren’t enough nurses back on the ward to accept any patients back, and secondly when there were enough nurses there weren’t any porters - most nurses did and have been pushing the beds themselves, but my nurse had back pain as a result of doing repeatedly doing this, so for her own health had to wait for a porter before we could return to the ward. I was the last patient waiting in recovery which had to stay open an extra 20 minutes past its closing time (bearing in mind I should have left 3-4 hours before this point) as a result of the resourcing issues. I wrote the feedback above on a form at the hospital and left it with the nurse who was looking after my obs, but wanted to add this paragraph online because it was about her personally and she had already made a joke about changing the feedback on the form once I had left. She was an agency nurse, she was really lovely and I liked her as a person, but she was writing my obs on napkins, and did this three times over the course of an hour. I do not consider this to be safe or professional practice. Again I just want to emphasise that I am so grateful for the NHS, the staff and the incredible care I have been lucky enough to consistently receive. It allows me to live a normal life even with a chronic health condition. I am very aware that this would not be the case in many other places around the world and I will always be thankful.