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Scarborough General Hospital – Would You Want To Stay There ??
Many townsfolk of Whitby now suggest that Whitby Hospital is little more than a nursing home for the elderly. It is also widely acknowledged that should you fall ill at Whitby it is highly likely you will be taken to Scarborough General Hospital. From minor injuries to major illness, it now seems that Whitby people will get their medical care from Scarborough Hospital.
In recent times, several Whitby people have been unfortunate enough to end up in Scarborough Hospital have voiced their concerns over the general cleanliness of the hospital and also the poor level of care experienced there.
Earlier today Real Whitby was contacted by a member of our local community. His story tells of an unfortunate event which saw him taken to Scarborough General Hospital. Im sure you will agree that his story is quite frightening.
Real Whitby asks, Is Scarborough Hospital fit for purpose ? Heres the story sent into Real Whitby earlier today.
“Without too much detail of dates etc and as briefly as possible, as you have requested, here is an outline of my 3 visits to this hospital in the past few months:
Just before Christmas I had to do a 999 trip into A&E with a sudden upsurge in my long standing asthma problem which previously I had been able to control.
A morning was spent in A&E with nebuliser and oxygen treatment which improved the situation.
At about lunchtime I was told by a doctor that I could go. Somewhat surprised, I conformed and was told that I could use the phone in the lobby of A&E to call for a taxi. I think that I must have been dulled after the trauma of choking and treatment and I went.
Two days later at 3am I had to 999 call again. This time I was admitted and was put in the Acute Assessment Unit for a 5 day horrific stay.
I was asked why I had discharged myself from my previous stay! AAU is intended as a temporary stopover, as the title indicates, before patients are transferred to an appropriate ward for their complaint.
Comings and goings went on throughout the 24 hours. Sleep was impossible for me, living as I do in a quiet country village with little passing traffic. The ward patients were a mixture of a drunk at midnight plus who foully cursed and shouted through the night and there were several confused elderly people both male and female who in my opinion should have been “in care”.
One lady screamed, unbelievably but true, for 24 hours before being taken away.
I feigned improvement to escape before I too became elderly (I am) and confused ( which I am not). Several weeks later as a result of snow clearing, I contracted pneumonia and was back in the hospital again.
After one day in Intensive Care I spent 10 days in Beech Ward which comprises 3 main wards plus single “side rooms”. As my Consultant had decreed that I should be on 24 hour watch in case of deterioration, I had a single room overnight, but was moved the next day to a multi-bed ward there.
I was having extreme difficulty in breathing with a BP of 210 over 190 (if I recall correctly) which is “danger of death” level One early morning I had an extreme reaction and was fighting for breath. I rang the bell for assistance and 40 minutes later a nurse arrived with the terse question “what do you want? Hardly the tender loving care that my wife, a nurse, said was the essential skill of nursing.
I asked for a nebuliser and oxygen as prescribed by my excellent consultant. 30 minutes later that was provided. I could have died in that time.
My assessment of Scarborough Hospital :
The consultancy skills are excellent.
The food was well prepared, tasty and delivered hot.
The nursing response, as dictated by the consultants during the morning visit, were seldom followed through, There is an enormous communications gap – Consultant to nurse and nurse to nurse.
Night staff in particular were of a low standard. In their defence, in Beech Ward there were 3 on night duty for three relatively distant separated rooms and 30 or so patients – a mix of senile and confused patients with sick patients is just too much of a burden for proper care.
This mix should not be allowed, especially with male and female sharing wards. Isn’t this illegal?
Night staff’s morale is extremely low. It is not good for the patient to hear a catalogue of complaints as the staff arrive for duty.This does not give patients a good impression of the staff’s performance likelihood!
The mixing of patients who are ill with those who should be in a Care Home is a recipe for conflict in a ward room.
The resultant noise from these patients shouting, screaming,swearing and even loudly singing through the night is hardly conducive to an ill patient’s quick recovery.
The wards that I was in, with the exception of the Intensive Care Unit, were all decrepit, with holes in the walls, a poor standard of decoration and a generally dilapidated appearance.Cleaning on a daily basis was a desultory exercise of staff “going through the motions”.
Under the Patient’s Choice scheme I hope never to visit this hospital again. The problem, is however, that under an emergency call, I will have no choice. That place is a cross between a zoo and a Travel Lodge.
My next scheduled hospital visit, to my relief, is to Hull Royal Infirmary – my choice.”
11 Responses to Scarborough General Hospital – Would You Want To Stay There ??
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Say No To Joe
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Marion Sythe-Jones
March 25, 2011 at 4:58 pm
Another interesting article. I do wonder if a stay in Whitby hospital would be any different. What is described here is a reflection of an under funded NHS with staff morale at an alltime low due to unrealistic performance criteria being cast on staff from an out of touch government.
Ted Baker
March 26, 2011 at 6:38 am
Some drastic action is needed by someone, somewhere to bring this hospital back to acceptable standards. I note that the chief man has just left and genuinely hope that his replacement will manage to improve matters. However, I can see that a large amount of money will be needed to even improve the general building and ward standard – which at present is dreadful. What can be done about the staff is another matter. In my opinion a lot of them should be retired and some new talent injected. I doubt that will happen in today’s system of employment! Whilst I was a patient there for the second time in AAU, my daughter visited. She lives in the Isle of Man and there she enjoys the superb facilities of the Noble Hospital. I have visited that place and it is light years ahead of Scarborough. The chiefs of Scarborough Hospital should be made to visit there to see what they should be aiming for. My daughter is a qualified SRN and staffed at St Bartholomew’s (“Barts”) in London for many years. She was appalled at the condition of the place and the confusion of my discharge with argument amongst the staff as to who had authorised my release. It took almost 90 minutes to resolve this whilst she waited to collect me!
There are many reports of Scarborough Hospital being “merged with York”. I have no idea what this infers. It might be a precursor to closure, joining of funding, or the administration being passed over to York. It is certainly not clear to me as a Scarborough resident and ex-patient of our hospital. Whilst this indecision reigns, what hope is there for any radical changes to the present funding/structure upgrade or administration? Everything is likely held in limbo.
My wife, now dead, nursed in Scarborough for 10 years. In that time I was a frequent visitor as I ferried her to and fro. She retired from nursing in 1982 and I can tell you with certainty that standards there now bear no comparison to those days. Nursing Officers ruled Wards for all aspects of daily routine. The wards were immaculate. “Tommy Laughton” ward, in which she worked, was an example of how even an old structure could be kept as one would wish in a hospital – spotlessly clean, with definable staff ( I had no idea of the difference between trained and ‘in charge’ ward nurses from other grades such as students, domestic staff etc.) Some sort of “rank” leaflet should be given to patients so that they know if they are speaking to the correct person!
I feel that I am thrashing this subject too hard to you. But it is an important facility for area residents from Bridlington to your Whitby area and it is a crying shame that the level should have plummeted to this degree. We are all aware of the abysmally low rating that our hospital achieved in the National standards. Second from bottom. We should all be ashamed of this. We are, doubtlessly, but whatever the Trust structure is, NOTHING seems to change. If anything it continues to deteriorate. I dread the day that I ever have to return in emergency to that place. It is dangerous to patients – and how much lower standard is there than that? I have read in the local paper some letters giving glowing commendations regarding their stay in our hospital. Well, they must have been in a totally different situation or ward to that of mine. Or possibly they were so darned releived to get out that it induced such a statement….sorry, that amounts to sarcasm.All I am saying is that my experience ws one that I would not wish to repeat.
LINDA
April 6, 2011 at 10:35 pm
I was admitted to Scarbourough Acute Investigation unit in Aug 2008 during a short break to Whitby. Affer an operation at scunthorpe in June 2008 and several urgent re-admits there and in great pain and having contacted ‘C DIFF’ twice at Scunthorpe. i cannot say enough for Scarboro’ hospital. They saved my life. The care and attention was second to none. All thestaff were caring and dedicated. The place was so clean. After my stay of 4 days I continued to have all my follow up treatment there and I would go there again as a ‘first choice’ with no hesitation.
David Heselton
March 30, 2011 at 12:21 am
The people of the Whitby area should be demanding and requesting to go to the James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough, a hospital that is far far superior to Scarborough General Hospital.
The General Hospital at Scarborough is unable to deal with, or treat certain conditions and illnesses, for example heart surgery or neurosurgery, the refering hospitals from Scarborough are Hull or York which is of no use to the people of the Whitby area – Middlesbrough is much much closer.
For example – a person from Whitby is involved in a serious road accident at blue bank, the paramedics decide to take the injured person to the local District General Hospital ( Scarborough ) – but on arrival at A&E at Scarborough it is discovered that the patient has serious head injuries, the patient is then taken to Hull – 70 miles from Whitby.
If that patient had been taken to Middlesbrough in the first place, instead of been taken to Scarborough, he or she would have not gone any further away from home than Middlesbrough.
We all pay for the NHS through National Insurance and Taxation, is it nor right that the 25,000 tax payers of the Whitby district should have some say in our health services.
Shouldent our default local general hospital be James Cook and not Scarborough. ?
Many Whitby people are initialy taken to hospital in Scarborough but then end up in in Hull, York and even Leeds, but if they had initialy been taken to the James Cook Hospital they would almost certainly not have been moved any further away.
admin
April 3, 2011 at 10:56 am
I was out for a pint with my friend on Friday evening, and he told me the following horrifying story. A few months ago he started suffering quite sever abdominal pains. He presented at Whitby Hospital and saw a doctor who directed him to Scarborough Hospital. Upon asking how he was to get there he was told, “Get there yourself”. When he arrived he struggled to find a parking space and had to go into the hospital to find some change to put in the parking meter. By this time he’s in agony. Eventually he was admitted and operated on for a ruptured appendix. Personally speaking I find all these stories horrific. Surely the good people of Whitby deserve better than this.
David Heselton
April 4, 2011 at 11:08 am
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/speakout/NHS-email-MP
A quick and easy way to tell Robert Goodwill of your concerns at the proposed massive reorganisation and privatisation of hospital services.
angela
April 7, 2011 at 10:13 pm
If you are referred to hospital you now have the right to choose which one, I was reading a poster in the docs the other day.
David Heselton
April 8, 2011 at 1:11 pm
My 13 year old half cousen recently had a nasty accident which required surgery, one of the injuries sustained was a broken arm, the other day he went the 20 miles with his mother to Scarborough to have the pot replaced.
On arrival they were told that THEY HAD LOST HIS NOTES, therefore they could not replace the pot on his arm, so off they went back accross the moors to Whitby.
Not too long ago replacing a pot on a broken arm or leg was routinely done at Whitby Hospital, but not any more, in my opinion I think that people from this area should shun Scarborough Hospital alltogether, and instead insist or demand to be treated at James Cook.
For pregnant / expectant mothers, there is a very popular and well liked midwife led maternity unit at Guisborough ( same distance as Scarborough ).
The maternity unit at Guisborough is small, friendly and intimate, and if there are any major complications the specialised unit is just 8 miles away.
People from the Whitby District should vote with their feet
Judith Dennett
April 11, 2011 at 12:47 am
The maternity unit in Guisborough is obviously where all our Whitby and Fylingdales Mums should head. But why do they have one in Guisboorough just 8 miles from James Cook when Whitby Mums do not and have to face a 20 mile journey to Scarborough? Once again Whitby’s needs ignored and they wonder why people want to Free Whitby!
Tom Brown
November 18, 2011 at 2:59 pm
Last year Tony? Cameron visited India to insult Pakistan and to promise the Indians a bigger employment prospect in Britain.
Meanwhile certain hospitals have been designated ‘Failing Hospitals’ and now one has been handed over to a private company to manage. When that management was interviewed it was obvious the the company was Indian.
So instead of people going to India for much needed operations, India is coming to Britain lock stock and barrel. Not a bad idea you might say, but in my opinion ‘Failing Hospitals’ have been manipulated into their position by
‘Trusts’ ( a joke term for a rogue heating engineer who surreptitiously removes a vital part from a boiler in order to degrade it to assist him in his plan to sell you a new one) The question is, is Scarborough hospital a failed hospital? bearing in mind the clinicians in the hospital are as good as any only to be frustrated by management ‘The Trust’
sharon wilson
July 9, 2012 at 5:47 am
sack corrupt TOXIC greedy management!employ quality management and the malicious medical mobbing wasting millions of nhs money as dr geddes nyypct did.trumped up nonsense thats exists only in his head against pam brompton pharmacist .!250.000 at least wasted! the solution and ydh management sack them!!