"Experience as a neurology in-patient"

Nursing staff individually are mostly great with one alarming exception. Good contacts with Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy staff, who were willing to talk, but limited in their ability to deal with my questions and concerns about medical issues.

My big problem is with the doctors. I'm quite confident they are technically very competent. But there was no face-to-face communication from medical staff about my symptoms, condition, medications and options. Daily rounds seemed to consist of doctors travelling in large groups for mutual protection, led by an oracle, followed by nodding acolytes. 

They seemed very focused on technical scores: He's two over two or five out of ten, and protocols that determined the next step in treatment. I never had an individual doctor come and hold my hand, answer my questions, and explain what was happening. I felt absolutely like a lump of meat being processed through a very modern, complicated and highly automated factory

My Australian hospitalisation followed shortly after a three week period of hospitalisation in the cardiac care ward of a large Asian university teaching hospital. There, the standards of medical technology, I felt was probably five years or so behind the hospital I'm in in Australia. But the contrast in availability of access to medical staff and their attitudes and willingness to communicate was stark. There, the doctors all talked to each other, I had a cardiologist, a neurologist and an internal medicine specialist involved in my care, and they were prepared to interact with me and answer my questions. I always had access to the young interns treating me, their supervising registrars, and the unit director. It's probably unfortunate that my travel insurance company forced my medical repatriation back to Australia. In retrospect, I think I was receiving better care under that system than in the Australian system to which I returned.