Heartbeat: Patient shares care experiences with board members

February 10, 2020

Patient, Clare Alsop, shared her experiences with the Trust Board in January, talking about the impact her condition and treatment had following her long-term care at the Trust.

Clare had an extremely rare skin condition and was admitted onto one of the medical wards at City Hospital. Her condition meant that her immune system was compromised and, knowing this, she requested a side room. At the time, Clare was not given a side room to move into. She subsequently contracted severe pneumonia and was cared for in critical care for nine weeks, requiring a tracheostomy. Clare moved to a medical ward for a further month and then on to Rowley Regis Hospital.

The medication and treatment caused significant side effects including hallucinations that were extremely disturbing for Clare. On transfer to the medical ward from critical care, Clare was extremely concerned.

Talking about her experience, Clare said: “There were a lot of positives but some negatives. The critical care outreach team were absolutely brilliant in acting really quickly and I had excellent care in critical care. I felt very safe. Communication was a bit of a problem as I couldn’t talk so it was difficult to make people understand what I was feeling. I hallucinated a lot due to the medication and that was terrifying.”

Clare continued, “Once I was well enough to leave critical care, I moved back to a medical ward and I was really worried about that transition. I was still experiencing hallucinations and I don’t think the staff understood the impact of these hallucinations as I was shouting out at night a lot and was threatened to stop or I could be removed by security.”

“I felt that I needed a lot more emotional and mental health support that wasn’t available to help me come to terms with the whole experience.”

Chief Executive, Toby Lewis, asked what sort of mental health support would have been useful and Clare expressed her view that someone who could sit and listen to you, such as a trained counsellor who understood critical care, would have been helpful.

The Board members thanked Clare for being brave enough to share her story. Paula Gardner, Chief Nurse, explained that a lot had changed for the better since Clare’s hospital stay including easy-press call bells in critical care and visits from the receiving medical ward teams to critical care patients and their families to help with transition.