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Rochford Hospital 2022-07-28 Person 2 5 0

My daughter has spent 7 months in this hospital. There are some fantastic people working there but there are also some terrible ones! The hospital is clean, spacious, modern. The grounds and gardens outside the building are kept in a good condition. The car park has adequate and easy parking (except at 3 PM when parents of children in a nearby primary take over this car park! But that's not Rochford Hospital's fault.) Communication is absolutely dire. Communication within the hospital is bad but communication with parents/carers is dismal. Most staff knew absolutely nothing about anorexia when my daughter was admitted. I spent a lot of time bringing them up to scratch, putting documents together for them etc., but they still routinely did and said things that were outright stupid including making comments about body size, weight etc (which are the worst topics to bring up with anorexic patients). The staffing issue is a major problem. The hospital relies extensively on agency staff and we've often had staff fall asleep when they were meant to be watching, on 1:1, a seriously suicidal patient! On other occasions they didn't quite know what they were doing or screwed up even simple tasks. In the case of the doctor treating my daughter, respect for parents / carers was close to zero. There was no consultation with me even though I have a long history of taking care of my daughter very well and knowing her far better than they do. The doctor went out of his way to exclude me from important meetings - like CPAs - discussing my daughter's care and he was so insufferably arrogant that it was impossible to talk to him about anything! This had a seriously detrimental effect on my daughter's care. Nurses and the ward manager were approachable and took the time to log any issues. They do not necessarily get back when they say they'll do though. The telephone is very hit and miss. In about 50% of cases I tried calling I got through. The other 50% involved me dialling again and again, sometimes for several times at different times of the day, before I could get to speak with anyone. There were occasions when my daughter was manhandled and verbally abused by staff and it always seemed the case, quite strangely, that there was no video footage of the incident. There was no footage from the security cameras that are on constant recording and no footage from the body cams that the staff wear!