Share review of Wythenshawe Hospital

Wythenshawe Hospital 2014-01-01 Person 5 5 0

I had a c-section on 30/12/2013 and was discharged on 01/01/2014. Unfortunately I could not recommend the postnatal ward at all. There was a severe shortage of staff with only 2 midwives to a full ward and it was almost impossible to get any help at all during the night. During my first night I asked for someone to help me feed my daughter as it was 4 hours since she last fed, I was told to wait another hour, this was repeated until 7 hours passed at which point I insisted that I was able to feed her as I thought this was far too long without feeding. My notes were later completed saying "baby not fed for 7 hours, advised Mum to feed more regularly". This was completely untrue, I had been asking every hour for someone to pass my baby to me to so that I could feed her. The morning after my section I was told to get a shower which I did do, I almost passed out on the way back and collapsed onto my bed. I was later told that somebody should have gone with me to the shower as it is common to faint and that I should not have been told to go on my own. There was very little help to establish breast feeding. I was supposed to be feeding my baby every 3 hours due to feeding problems. One midwife said that they that they would come and help me syringe feed my baby in 5 minutes time and then didn't show up, when I went to try and find the midwife who was going to help she had gone home. An hour and a half later I was able to find another midwife to help to be asked why I hadn't fed her with the syringe myself, I had previously been told that I wasn't allowed to do this due to the risk of aspiration. On the day of discharge, I was about to be discharged when I pointed out that nobody had done a FBC, this then had to be arranged. I also pointed out that nobody had done the baby check and this then had to be done. The severe lack of staff and inconsistent approaches makes me very wary of using Wythenshawe again.