"Needs more people to ask what is going on"

About: Croydon University Hospital / Older people's healthcare

(as a relative),

In my view the ward itself needs more people to ask what is going on. My Dad has dementia and cant tell me what is happening. The Doctors come in the morning, as his daughter it is difficult to know what is going on and what has been said in the morning. I might catch someone if lucky and they will say this or that that has happened but there is not a system for saying what’s happened, its only if you can catch anyone to tell you what the medical update is.

Access to TV’s would be nice. With dementia my dad can’t do word search so there is nothing for him to do, so he gets easily bored. My dad has also spent 3 weeks waiting to see a neurologist following a referral. So it feels like my dad is marking time and has been here over a month. Further surgery is needed and hasn’t even booked so it feels like he is here with nothing happening, they don’t seem to be getting on and doing things.

When he is bored he wanders, gets restless and disturbs the nurses. In terms of the nursing care, some are good, some less so.

My dad is the first dementia person in the family he was diagnosed 3 years ago at the Memory Clinic at South Norwood but he has not been reassessed in that time it would have been good to have better access to information

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Responses

Response from Estelene Klaasen, Croydon Health Services NHS Trust 10 years ago
We are preparing to make a change
Estelene Klaasen
Croydon Health Services NHS Trust
Submitted on 14/10/2014 at 16:39
Published on Care Opinion at 17:04


Thank you for being complementary towards our staff. We appreciate your positive feedback and will share it with the teams. Unfortunately the patient bedside entertainment systems were provided by an external provider. These systems were out-dated and are being removed from CUH. The Trust is currently exploring alternatives so that we can provide a consistent and more improved access to entertainment for our patients. In addition the ward staff are working closely with the occupational therapists and they are hosting activities in the Day Room on Wandle 1 to break the boredom for our patients. We are very sorry to hear that your father waited 3 weeks for a neurology review which is unacceptable. The neurology team is in the process to recruit a clinical nurse specialist to support the neurology team and reduce waiting times. The ward staff are the first point of contact for updates but each ward area has a matron allocated.

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