DCH staff transformed my life (From Dorset Echo)

DCH staff transformed my life

6:00pm Thursday 4th February 2010 in

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Like Councillor Peter Shorland, I too spent Christmas in the Maud Alexander Ward in Dorset County Hospital (‘Best of care’, Your Say, January 14), and I would like to endorse everything in his letter.

I came down from London to spend the holiday with my mother in Weymouth. On December 22, feeling unwell, I attended the walk-in centre at Weymouth Hospital.

Thanks to the rapid diagnosis of the GP and nurse I saw there, I was soon in an ambulance, strapped up to an oxygen mask, and on my way to Dorchester, where I quickly found myself in the Maud Alexander Ward.

It took me a while to realise how ill I was, but when I was discharged back to London on December 29, I had been effectively stabilised, and felt greatly improved.

The staff were absolutely brilliant, and everyone from cleaner to consultant worked together as a team to make us all feel comfortable and cared for.

I cannot remember all the names, but Scott and Mel identified in the councillor's letter were certainly amongst them. The ward, in which all the patients were pretty ill, ran like clockwork, with large doses of level-headedness and good humour.

It is a shame that politicians and the national media concentrate on the minority of negative stories about the NHS. I feel that the staff in the Maud Alexander Ward provided a glowing example of everything that is great about the NHS. We would all do well to remember this, and use our best endeavours to save the NHS from those who would wreck it.

I am pleased to say that I am already back at work, feeling better than I have for months, and have a wonderful cardiologist and Warfarin Nurse at Newham General Teaching Hospital.

Many thanks again then, Team Maud Alexander, for transforming my life, and your compassion and commitment in doing so.

Bill Page, Ham Park Road, Forest Gate, (East) London.