Since the Campaign began we've heard many, many times about the excellent care local people have enjoyed at the Royal Surrey. These stories make very clear why it is so important to protect the hospital from cuts to services, whether in A&E, maternity, cancer care, or elsewhere.
We'd really like to hear from you with your story. Please add it as a comment to this post. These case studies will bring to life why it is so important to save the Royal Surrey.
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13 comments:
I have a 10 year old son who has a very complex medical history. We first started attending the RSCH when at 18 months old he was diagnosed with liver cancer. He subsequently had 6 months chemotherapy and a liver transplant at 2 years old. He has been monitored by our consultant at the RSCH for the past 8 years and has only just finished a 2 year course of chemotherapy for non-hodgkins lymphoma.
As he has battled through all these conditions and the complex issues associated with each one disease individually and combined, the RSCH has been pivotal in managing his overall treatment and looking after us, as a family. The large specialist hospitals we also visit, are too big and anonymous to be up-to-date with all their patients individually and too narrow in their field to see the bigger picture of overall care.
Our RSCH consultant has very often raised matters that the other hospitals have missed and we know that if our son were to be admitted tomorrow, he would know exactly where he stands with all his treatment programmes and consequently be able to make a rapid, well-informed diagnosis and treatment plan.
I believe that if the A&E were to close there would be serious implications for the treatment of children like mine.
I wonder if there would be a reliable reference point (like our consultant) in hospitals which are asked to deal with larger number of patients and the 'human' element of care is lost - just as in the big London hospitals. When we visit these it is not unusual to be surrounded by various training doctors and to be continually asked for examinations which can become very dehumanising.
You can feel like a 'project' or an interesting statistic quite quickly.
In the RSCH, however, we know all the consultants and sisters on the ward which immediately puts the patient at ease and hence speeds recovery. When my son was admitted with a chemo-related seizure, the up-to-date knowlege of the SHO helped save his life. He was able to quickly correctly assess the situation and stabilise him before transfering him to intensive care in London.
The government wants people to have more community based care but surely by stripping us of our local hospital they are denying us the very thing that we already have.
Community nursing is expensive. Already there are not enough specially trained community paediatric oncology nurses so it will clearly cost a lot more to recruit, train and manage locally based teams. Accountability is lost the minute you start splitting up care into different areas and communication is also harder to manage.
In our experience, good communication has been a key part in managing our son's illnesses. This works well at the local hospital level, however, again, when there are bigger hospitals in the mix, it breaks down with poor computerisation, busy staff unable to take and return calls and notes that never seem to be in the right place at the right time. It cannot compensate for face-to-face, consultant-led consultations and where A&E and other departments are all interlinked under one roof.
Transport is another key issue. Travelling from say, Dunsfold to St Peters would be time-consuming and impractical in rush-hour traffic. Ambulances do not fare very well in grid-locked traffic even with a blue-light (we have experience). Ambulance staff are wonderful but they are quite quick to lament their badly resourced ambulances which make the patients car-sick and are not cut out for long journeys on our bumpy roads.
Again, I wonder about the financial reality of resourcing them up to the best standard to cope with the number of seriously ill patients who will have to travel much longer distances or be transferred from urgent care centres to A&E if someone has ended up in the wrong place with a serous condition that cannot be treated at that particular centre.
The RSCH has been upgraded in many ways over the past couple of years. A new children's ward has seen the inclusion of some wonderful isolation facilities. I wonder if the other local hospitals have facilities to compare or will they too need to be upgraded and increased at high financial cost to cope with the fall-out from other hospitals.
The transport to other hospitals has an added complication when you consider parking. Already, St Peters, for example, does not have enough parking spaces for it's current patient turnover. There are no possibilities to park on surrounding roads and queues already back up onto the main roads at peak times. Is yet more money going to be spent on up-grading these facilities.
My concern also involves the recent acknowledgement that Frimley Park has its biggest source of patients from Hampshire. One wonders why it therefore is maintained by the Surrey PCT and is considered to be one of the Surrey hospitals in the re-evaluation mix. Surely Surrey is therefore served by one less hospital and this has big implications when deciding the patient base for each hospital which has been crucial in leading the PCT decision to close one of the three A & E units. Surely, if we need 2 A&E's, but one of the hospitals serves mainly Hampshire, then the other two A&E's should remain to serve Surrey.
Do the Hampshire PCT contribute their share of finances to the running of Frimley Park? If not, why should a hospital serving wholly Surrey be nominated for closure or cuts instead of the one that has admitted it only has a minor role to play in the care of Surrey patients?
I await the patient consultation with keen interest. Will they listen to what we have experience of or will they listen to their 'advisors' who have no experience of health care on the ground and just place their hopes on a dreamed-up model that has not been tried out and which the whole medical profession are telling them is unworkable. I have not met one consultant, GP, nurse or ambulance crew member who is in favour of this idea. They see it instead as a recipe for disaster and one that we must do our utmost to prevent.
Please everyone play your part. If we lose the RSCH or any part of it, we will be placing lives in danger and losing what has been for us at any rate, a definite life-saver.
After a horrendous labour my daughter became enmeshed in her umbilical cord during birth & began to panic. She swallowed a large quantity of meconium & was whisked away on delivery to the Special care unit at the Royal Surrey after failing to breathe due to clogged lungs. They resucitated her & pumped it out of her lungs, while she lay in an incubator.
It was a tremendously stressful & potentially fatal situation.
The staff & facilities were superb.
The prospect of having another child anywhere else stresses me out to the point of not wanting to have more children.
This hospital needs to be saved!
I first used the Royal Surrey when I was run over in Sainsburys car park in Burpham. The Ambulance rushed me to them within minutes and it transpired that I had sustained multiple fractures to the bones that make up the knee joint. Not only was i treated courteously and respectfully by the A & E team, but once admitted onto the orthopaedic ward my treatment became even more special. The nursing staff were fantastic and even gave me a cuddle on a particularly tearful day, along with the consultant and registrar who maintained their good humour and excellent bedside manner. All of the staff encouraged me throughout to start walking again as soon as I was able, and the drive to make them happy became my primary motivator. I wrote my thanks at the time.
The next time I needed the Royal Surrey was for a kidney stone, if they hadnt been thorough in their investigations of a urinary problem then I might have gone on to a painful passing of this stone, but oh no, as always, they were on the ball and were able to give me treatment by blasting it with soundwaves at thier outpatient surgery department. Again all the staff were fantastic, friendly and very re-assuring.
If this hospital closes then all the patients, service users or clients will have to travel miles and miles to get treatment. some will die on the long journey, perhaps this is tony blairs plan, if more die on their way to hospital it will mean there will be less to treat, or am i being too cynical!!!!
I used the Royal Surrey A&E in 2001 when I fell and dislocated my knee cap on the Surrey Research Park. It is just a stone's throw from the hospital which was a relief because my injury was immensely painful and a shocking experience. The Royal Surrey receptionist, doctor, XRay technicians, nursing staff and plaster room technicians were swift, empathic and professional at treating me. I was referred for physio at the hospital and thanks to the effective medical care I received at Royal Surrey, this injury has not re-occured since.
In contrast, in 1999, when I dislocated my knee cap for the first time and I was living elsewhere, the other hospital I visited just shooed me away and didn't believe me when I told them what had happened... I am so glad that the Royal Surrey gave me proper medical care when it happened for a second time and that I have been able to get on with an active life pain- and worry-free since then.
Royal Surrey achieves high standards of care relative to the NHS as a whole and should be nurtured and improved rather than threated with cuts and closure.
Thank you all for your comments. These are exactly the sort of very human stories we need, that really help to show why the hospital is so important to local people.
To anyone else reading, we still need more!
My daughter has Asthma which can be quite servre at times, she needs to go to A&E for the nebuliser, steriods and to decide should she need admitting.
Should our A&E close I would be forced to use an ambulance in every case my daughter needs a visit to A&E as I can not drive. I dont see how this is benefical to cutting costs in the long run.
I am thinking about selling my house and moving to an area much closer to a hospital as I can not gamble with her life....
I hardly know where to start with the number of times I have had dealings with RSCH but to precis a few events; my mother received cancer treatment in 2003. I underwent a major op. My daughter was involved in a road traffic accident in 2005 and suffered an horrendous complex fracture. The consultant realised it was too badly damaged for him to operate so she was, eventually, transferred to one of the specialist hospitals in London but during her 3 months recovery, she had to use the facilities at RSCH on several occasions, as an emergency situation and the staff were absolutely fantastic on each occasion. She was never kept waiting in A&E due to the nature of the problem. I too had to use the fantastic walk-in facility and the doctor was so helpful [much better than my GP] and due to her suggestion I was then referred to a specialist. I could go on but I can honestly say, without this hospital in it's entirety, we would have to drive much further afield and this would definitely put lives at risk as well as having to suffer the psychological implications when people are under health pressure. Not only should the closure be a 'non-starter' but the PCT should be thinking of investing into these hosptials. After all most of us contribute to this National system in large amounts [as verified by my payslip at the end of each month]. It is a well known fact that the management of these Trusts are paid vast sums, as are most of the management involved in hospitals. The government prefer us to take out private health insurance but they will expect us to continue paying NI contributions and redirect the money to any destination of their choice. RSCH must remain in it's entirety or we will all suffer the consequences at some point in our lives.
In 2004 I broke my arm when 8 months pregnant. I was at work at the time and was taken to the (nearest) A&E at St Peter's, which was supposed to provide specialist maternity care. Unfortunately I was treated appallingly - the 'maternity care' consisted of one doctor running his hand over my bump 2 hours after my arrival (and about 3.5 after the fall) and saying 'seems fine'. I then had a junior nurse force my arm into a sling, when I had no pain relief (due to pregnancy) and nearly passed out. This was so that they could get me out of the door within their 4 hour target time limit.
Meanwhile my husband (shocked at this treatment) rang our GP and got me referred to the Royal Surrey the next day.
The Royal Surrey seamlessly cooperated between A&E, maternity, plaster room and fracture clinic, to both put my mind at rest and to cover all aspects of my situation, and I was in a bed in an individual room, having been operated on 3 days later.
Six weeks later when I went in to the Royal Surrey again to give birth, I was treated amazingly - the midwife stayed with me 6 hours after her shift had finished and then got me an individual room again for the remainder of my stay.
I hope never to set foot in St Peter's again, but would gladly recommend the Royal Surrey to anyone in any circumstances.
At the end of last year, my husband was operated on at RSCH for prostate cancer. We know that the Prostate Project leads the field in cancer surgery and feel very favoured to live within reach of such a facility.
On discharge from the hospital, one of the operation "ports" developed into a "bleeder" and I had to rush my husband to A&E - this happened late one evening. Because we were returning to the hospital where my husband had had the operation, he was a known quantity. A&E only had to phone the ward to get his details. The incision was successfully closed. If we had had to drive to Frimley or St Peter's, we would have been in a hopsital where none of his details would have been known and the situation would have been very different - to say nothing of the time it would have taken for me to drive a bleeding person to the hospital.
The RSCH has to keep its A&E!
I have visited loads of times when i was young - asthma attacks, sports injuries, being knocked out. I was usually at A&E at least once a term during high school and always received excellent treatment. It is also easy to access to visit other family and friends who have been n for various operations.
When I was 10 I had to have an operation and they looked after me very well. I went back over the easter week end to get stitches removed and the easter bunny gave me a chocolate egg, even though i was only in for half an hour - it made my day!
My husband became ill. As he has rheumatoid arthritis we thought that it was a side effect of the new drugs. Late one evening he passed blood in his urine and later could not pass urine at all. We went the 15 miles to the A&E at the Royal Surrey. The were wonderful, supportive, ptofessional and helpful. They examined him thoroughly, catheterised him and found a bed - this now being 2am. His treatment continued in the ward. He was sent for Xrays and scans. They managed to enable him to pass urine again and discivered that he had a tumour in his kidney. This took 4 days, mainly the treatment to restart passing water. he was allowed home for the weekend and readmitted on the Sunday night - after supper. His kidney was removed on the Monday, complete with fully intact tumour. He is under careful monitoring, attending out patients every 6 months with back up scans for reassurance.
If I had had to drive a man in quite a bit of pain any further I'm not sure we would have made it. Where would our nearest A&E be? Frimley Park? Queen Alexandria in Portsmouth? or St Peter's Chertsey? Not all under the same health authority. They may not be that far in miles but have you been driven on the country roadwith potholes when you are in pain?
The RSCH were wonderful, not only to my husband, but also to me. The staff gave me all the support that I needed during a difficult time.
In the 30 years since we moved from London to Surrey the RSCH has treated our entire family. In my case it was breast cancer, two collapsed lungs and internal bleeding. Both my parents were given excellent treatment and consideration there in their final years.
Now my husband has vascular dementia and without the amazing care from the Florence Desmond Day Hospital neither he nor I could cope.
We had planned to move away when I retired but have stayed, despite huge financial pressures, because there is no way I would remove him from the orbit of his consultant there.
Over the years we've seen the hospital grow and improve. I and many others have stood in Guildford High Street with collecting tins for the breast cancer appeal. Endless numbers of people have given their time and money to build what we see today. It is inconceivable to think of all that going to waste when it isn't even necessary.
In basic practical terms the hospital is on a main road where everyone can find it and there's parking.
Last Wednesday dawned fine and sunny, so I decided to roll-up at Clandon-Regis for the weekly ‘High Handicappers’ event. I was doing quite well – until stopping to mark my card after completing the 9th hole, when I started to feel dizzy with a little chest pain. This passed off quite quickly, so I dismissed it as passing indigestion and carried on with the round. Whilst pulling my trolley uphill on the 12th, I noticed that I was breathing quite heavily – this is unusual, as I am quite fit and go to the gym regularly – but again I played on. Getting to the 13th tee, I had to sit down on the bench nearby, as I was starting to feel faint again – but then I managed to play a good shot down the centre of the fairway. As I reached my ball, common sense finally kicked-in and I picked up and walked off the course back to the clubhouse. I drove home (silly, I know) and had a shower and felt a lot better.
One of my daughters (who is a doctor) happened to call, so I relayed my story. Following her strict instructions, I called my GP and was offered an emergency appointment later in the day, together with the alternative suggestion that I could go immediately to A&E at the Royal Surrey.
My wife dropped me off at the entrance to A&E. I explained that I had had a chest pain and dizziness on the golf course and the receptionist came around to the front of the desk, took my arm and led me straight down the corridor into the incident unit. She got me to sit down whilst she went and found one of the doctors – within 5 minutes of entering the hospital, I was lying down and plugged into an ECG monitor.
After various tests, A&E were unable to diagnose the problem, but were unwilling to let me go. They said that there was a further ‘enzyme’ blood test that should be done 12 hours after an event such as mine and so they transferred me to the MAU (Medical Assessment Unit) for an overnight stay.
The staff in the MAU were considerate and helpful and settled me in. Close to midnight, they carried out the test; the results came back abnormal at 2 a.m. and they put me onto a close observation routine for the rest of the night. In the morning, the consultant in charge of the MAU confirmed that I had had a ‘cardiac event’ and that he would transfer me shortly.
By mid-day I found myself in the CCU (Cardiac Care Unit). The transfer was handled in a professional manner and my case notes discussed between both teams, so that the CCU staff nurse in charge was completely up to speed. I was put onto a 24/7 observation and drug plan. At the end of the day, I was visited by the Registrar and told that I had been put on tomorrow’s list for an Angiogram. She explained this procedure and answered my questions.
The following morning, the consultant came round and explained things again. At 1 pm, the procedure was carried out by this enthusiastic team of highly trained professionals using X-ray equipment. As it was done under a local anaesthetic, they were able to talk me through it and then finished by giving me an on-the-spot diagnosis. I was lucky – my ‘cardiac event’ had not resulted in much damage and there was no need for surgery, but I would have to take regular medication to help lower the risk of a further incidence. By 5.30 pm I was discharged from the CCU, holding my prescribed pills. The whole process had been completed within 48hrs.
Throughout my stay, the doctors and nurses in all 3 departments were helpful, courteous and efficient. The teams worked well together during handovers and I was kept well informed on the progress of my case. I felt as though I was getting VIP treatment from the NHS.
My background is in the high tech business – if our Company had more employees of this calibre, enthusiasm and expertise we would be ‘winging it’ in the marketplace. My advice to the Surrey PCT on considering changes to the way services are provided at the RSCH would be to follow a well proved business adage – ‘ if it ain’t broke, don’t try and fix it’.
Clive Mingo 12th Aug 07
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