"Palliative Care ."

I would like to see more attention paid to palliative care patients. In the week I and my wife spent looking after my mother-in-law and wife's mum some of the nurses, were nice, polite and others didn’t seem to care. End of life can be a pretty emotional time, but in my opinion your palliative care and cleaners fail you big time. The room wasn’t clean from the minute I walked in.  Floors were not cleaned all week. I put a dot on the floors, it never moved. The window sills were dusty, on top of curtain rails were dusty, the waste bins. I gave up on the 4th day, I went to the cleaner's trolley. For 4 days you failed in your presentation to be clean, the bins weren’t emptied for 4 days running. I have a standard where I work and that’s one that gives me the utmost @#*&%. Sorry for the language, but if your parents were put in this situation then I would have asked for them to be moved. The urine wasn’t removed. And left to fill up to the top of the bag, even the suction body fluids were seen clearly in the wasted container which sat there for 24 hours. In our opinion as a family, you have a problem. No family should have to tell the nurse on the day that their beloved parent is passing, but that happened. The nurse seem to not be interested as there was a code black going on. In our view, there was clearly a communication problem. The nurse didn't show much empathy in my opinion. I told the nurse that my mother-in-law was passing and only had a small amount of time. By the time I came back with the nurse, she said my mother-in-law had gone. But the nurse came in the room, didn't say much, made a cup of tea for the wife, then left. A junior doctor came and that was the last we saw of her. Even during the after care, another nurse gave not much information. Palliative care seemed overlooked at the end of the life for the family. We felt there wasn’t any empathy shown towards my mother-in-law. It seemed to be a full rush from here to there with no proper service shown. In our opinion, we can safely say there wasn't any compassion, care or empathy shown towards the family. We only get one good bye in life and I have to say I believe you failed on all the service that day.

What you have done good is support for the husband in the social care and your clinic staff were extremely friendly and welcoming. I accept that you are a major hospital, but the reports from country people is the service isn't great. How you address it is up to you, but please treat patients and their families with the respect we would expect from professionals who are getting paid a good wage to do their jobs. Anyway, the problem will come and go I hope you can find some good in the feedback.

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