'Second Class Citizen'

On the 27th of April my husband was taken to Torrevieja hospital by ambulance from the Health centre in Cabo Roig suffering from diarrhoea, vomitting and passing blood. The doctor and nurses at the Health centre were fantastic. I followed by car to the hospital.

On arriving there I wasn't allowed in while he was being attended to.  Eventually I was let in to join him.  We waited a few minutes before the doctor that attended to him came over and explained to me that they  were keeping him overnight for observations .  I accompanied him to a ward for his overnight stay. 

After he was admitted I left for  home the time then was 7.30pm. I returned to the hospital an hour later, I had brought him a dressing gown, slippers, and a few drinks.  Unfortunately, I could not remember how to get to the ward he was in.  I approached a male nurse and asked him if I could be allowed into the ward to see my husband: he asked me to write my husband's name on a piece of paper, which he then took to a different doctor that was working on a computer along the corridor.  I was then told to sit and wait in one of the waiting rooms.  I had been waiting for about twenty minutes when I decided that I would go back to the nurse and tell him that I wasnt actually on a visit instead I had brought a few essential things for  my husband.  As I stood up the doctor behind the computer said to me in a very  strong tone, "sit down and wait, I am working on your husband's notes, I will talk to you when I have finished".  I sat down and waited for another fifteen minutes or so, wondering what on earth was happening.  The doctor then came to me and said  "he's got a blockage here, pointing to his chest, we are sending him to Alicante hospital because we don't have the right equipment for that kind of investigation in this hospital."  I then asked him when he was being taken to Alicante,  he said  "now, now, an ambulance is coming for him now."   I asked if that meant I had to go back home, to that he said "Yes."  Just like that.

I went out into my car and  decided to sit and wait for the ambulance so that I could have a chance of seeing my husband being brought out into the ambulance and driven away.  Ten minutes later the ambulance arrived.  I left my car went and stood near the ambulance at the main entrance.  A few minutes later the ambulance crew brought out a man on a stretcher into the ambulance - who was definitely not my husband.  He was driven off.  I was left confused , bewildered , didn't know who to turn to for and explanation; it was all too much for me to take in.  I then decided to go home, and that I would come back first thing in the morning.

As soon as I got home the phone rang; it was my husband asking me to come and collect him from the hospital.  He had been discharged. The time was 10.30pm then.  I drove back again, found him standing at the main entrance looking out for me.  We  went into the ward to collect his prescription and paperwork from the doctor that had attended to him, who explained what tests had been done and that the results were satisfactory.   To my surprise this wasn't the same doctor that had told me that my husband had a blockage, he was being sent  to Alicante.

How on earth can a hospital doctor make such a blunder!  It appears to me that he didn't bother to check the name of his patient before misinforming me about my husband, who wasn't even his patient, perhaps I should blame the nurse that gave this doctor my husbands name.  Could it be that the doctor was given the wrong name?  How, because I had written my husbands name for him on a piece of paper which, I presume he gave to the doctor?   We all know that they are very busy in the  Emergency Department, but mistakes like that should never happen in any hospital. It's unspeakable.       

Name and address supplied.