Argh *Headdesk*

[davidgillon]

Dear Dad's Rehab Unit,

12 hours notice of a discharge meeting is not a way to convince people that you are being above-board. It's pure chance I'm at the right end of the country and there's no time for us to contact the Stroke Association for support.
Scheduling the matron of the entire hospital to be there rather suggests you know you're asking for trouble.
Doing this a week after assuring us that it will be weeks before he is well enough to discharge, well Um!
Doing this a week after assuring us that we wouldn't be rushed into anything, well double Um!
A week after telling us not even to look for a care home, because we don't know what level of care he'll need - seriously, WTF?
Dad had had precisely two 'normal' days out of the last three weeks when you took this decision, strangely this doesn't meet my definition of 'stabilized'.
The last care home to agree to take him backed out because of his care needs even before his condition worsened, ignore that reality at your peril.
You want to move him onto the discharge ward, which you told us before Christmas was inappropriate for his needs. You admit his needs have since increased. I seriously doubt you can talk fast enough to convince us.
You are going to have questions asked of whether you can safeguard his care on a general ward, given demonstrated life-threatening issues the specialist unit has struggled with. Unconvincing answers will not go down well.
I am going to compare your handling of this with the treatment I recently received at what is allegedly the worst hospital in the country. You will not come out of this comparison looking good.
I am seriously tempted to pitch this sorry tale to the national daily I already have writing creds for, which just did a feature on bed-blocking. Do not push me. 
Signed
If you think I'm the quiet one of his children you're sadly mistaken....

Grr! Aargh!! *headdesk*

Comments

[calissa]

This is sounding increasingly horrendous! I do hope there's a good outcome for your father, but it sounds like you're fighting an uphill battle.

[davidgillon]

Thanks. It was much more positive than the initial communication had implied - looks like they realised they hadn't done a good job communicating in the past and were trying to make amends by taking the time to get it right this time.

[kaberett]

oh for crying out loud. good luck.

[davidgillon]

Thanks! Fortunately they came prepared to talk and explain even if their pre-meeting communication still sucks.

[davidgillon]

Well, it wasn't as bad as we expected.

Clearly they had come prepared to talk and explain, which is a step up from previous experiences, and I doubt every patient gets the matron for the entire hospital doing the explaining.

They do indeed want him to move onto the discharge ward they had previously said wasn't appropriate, but they explained why they had said that before, and why they felt it might be appropriate now (basically extra confusion with an imminent move to a care home previously versus a chance to assess him for several weeks at a lower level of nursing closer to what a care home can provide now) and let us raise each of our medical concerns and talked us through how the new ward would address them.

If they aimed for that level of communications as a rule then maybe they wouldn't have issues with people distrusting what they say! (Also, more than 12 hours notice of major meetings with a clear agenda of what is to be discussed would work wonders).

We had a tour of the new ward and talked to the ward managers, which was reassuring (there are a couple of things I'm not entirely happy with that may need to be raised, but they had already said they were prepared to address one if need be before I saw it). As a bonus the ward managers say they have a good relationship with our favoured care home, the one that backed out, and may be able to talk the manager around, which would be great.

[calissa]

Oh, that is a relief! I'm glad to hear the outcome was better than you'd been expecting.

Were you able to give them some feedback on their communication style?

[davidgillon]

Thanks, I haven't had enough direct contact with them to criticize effectively, but I suspect that the presence of the matron reflects a tacit admission on their part that they haven't done a particularly good job until now.

[davidgillon]

Dad moved over to the new ward today, so the Rehab Unit gave us a feedback form which we filled in collectively this evening - universal praise for the medical care, universal condemnation for their communications.

The proverbial mixed messages!

[davidgillon]

And they're at it again, phone call this morning to say the meeting to discuss who pays for his longterm care has been changed from next Friday to next Monday, without a thought that my sister is supposed to be attending, and as a deputy head who also teaches nearly full time she can't simply drop her classroom responsibilities on a whim. If my mother hadn't walked over to school to get a message to her then she'd have had a single working day to try and rearrange stuff, as it is she only has a day and a half, so god knows if she'll be able to attend.

*HEADDESK*