A friend of ours was taken to hospital with a lung problem. He was seen immediately and given X-Rays and a CAT scan. He has been in now for 14 days and has been told he won´t be allowed home until he is 100% fit. Although the ward is very basic and family have to be there when he was really ill to help he states that he has been looked after tremendously even to the fact that the food is enough to feed two of you as it is expected that there will be a member of family there and they will want to eat. I think that is all very reassuring if any of us ever have to be admitted. The down side is that he is unsure whether he will be presented with a bill for the medical costs as he has no health care and is not a pensioner.

Has he got the EH1C card? that should cover him.

No, been in Spain for three years witrh no health cover.

[QUOTE=Chiclanagir;5368277]A friend of ours was taken to hospital with a lung problem. He was seen immediately and given X-Rays and a CAT scan. He has been in now for 14 days and has been told he won´t be allowed home until he is 100% fit. QUOTE]

Chiclanagirl, I can't tell you how re-assuring that is! My MIL has been diagnosed with cancer over here in the UK, and has been told she must wait 10-14 DAYS for a CAT scan appointment. She is at home with us now recuperating and waiting for the appointment.
She has been planning to move out to Spain with us, and after reading your post, she said she wished she was over there right now!
Thanks!
Sally

[QUOTE=Cornish maid;5371441] Honestly our friend has had the best of treatments imaginable. He also stated that all the nurses were so happy and friendly but remember that in hospital treatment means that it is expected that a family member will be with the patient during the day and the night. They provide a chair which is like an aircraft seat which folds down to a kind of bed but then there is no privacy from the other people in the ward. But if the medical treatment is so good that is reasuring.

What happens if you HAVE no family?!

Tough? Honestly though I have no idea. Perhaps someone else can help with this one.

Can only speak for Torrevieja hospital. They have all single bed wards, with fold away beds for relatives. If you have no relatives then there are volunteers they can call on to help you, and they speak your language.

You often see adverts for people who are willing to volunteer (and some that charge) to do the hospital carer role. Nuns also do a lot of this work...

Bit scary to have a Nun turn up at your bedside you may think they know more than you do!

After my experience of the standard of "care" in a British hospital when my father spent 6 months in one from the end of December 2006 until he died in early July, I would certainly now prefer to be treated in a Spanish hospital and would be frankly terrified if I had to be admitted to a British one.

My Dad, who was a diabetic, suffered a stroke at the end of December and was admitted to hospital. He was making good progress with rehab following the stroke and arrangements were being made for him to be able to return home, but he had developed a foot ulcer which was treated completely inadequately despite the family hounding staff at every opportunity to do something about it. It deteriorated to the point when the big toe on his right foot had to be amputated, meaning a period of immobility which did not help his circulatory problems due to diabetes, then developed exactly the same problem on his left foot and the big toe on that foot also had to be amputated. The wound on the right foot did not heal properly, not helped in my opinion that it was sometimes days between dressings being changed, and eventually his right leg had to be amputated below the knee. We were told he would have to lose the left one too, but was not strong enough by this time for the surgeons to operate on both legs. Then he developed pneumonia and died a month later. Oh, and he also contracted MRSA which the staff did not tell us about until my brother noticed a sticker on his file to this effect. All this was despite the fact that either my brother, sister or myself visited my Dad every single day he was in hospital and had numerous meetings with senior nursing staff and doctors to raise concerns about his treatment. God help those who don't have families to help them, some elderly patients on his ward never seemed to have a visitor from one month's end to the next. We have made an official complaint to the hospital and are awaiting their initial response.

The final insult was that the hospital supplied incorrect measurements of my Dad's body to the undertakers resulting in the coffin we had ordered being 4 inches too short. Can these people do nothing right?

When my father in Law was in QE Birmingham following a stroke, he fell out of bed one night and lay there apparantly for hours.

I made an official complaint.

I got an interview with a doctor who told me I was wasting his time and his time could be better spent with patients ......... presumably not the ones that fall out of bed.

My God Lynn! Your post has left me lost for words. I am so sorry to read about the heartache you and your family have obviously gone through. Good luck with your complaint, but I can't help but feel (cynically I know) that you are banging your head against a brick wall.
Take care
Sally

Thank you for your good wishes, Sally. My family and I know realistically that we are unlikely to achieve much from a complaint but we feel we can't just let it go. We certainly don't want any kind of financial compensation, what we would like is for someone to be held accountable for what happened and for lessons to be learned, but in the case of consultants particularly they appear to be untouchable. I used to work for the organisation in the UK which is responsible for the inspection and assessment of hospitals and for second tier NHS complaints and the particular hospital involved has been made aware of that so I think they are going to be quite careful what they say. The Quality Manager of the hospital (now there's a job I wouldn't have for a gold clock) contacted my brother last week to say they needed more time to investigate so there is obviously a lot of back covering going on.

They close ranks and then well, what chance do any of us stand.

My father is diabetic age class 2, he was given a new medication, from about a month after the new medication he started to feel, cold lifeless and generally unwell he is a very fit and active 77 year old at the time, very independent a protector.
Well to cut a very long story short the medical profession were looking for a reason for his health state, and decided he must have a cancer somewhere in his body as he B12 was very low, he has had various intrusions into his body, and was due for a anal examination to look for bowel cancer.
We had been to visit my daughter and he asked me to drive his car, never in a million years would this be allowed to happen, and he was really cold. My mother and I were talking about drugs and sometimes there after effects, all of a sudden mum said to dad you know that you started to be ill about the time you started taking those new pills, about 18 months ago, No my dad said its not them, Mum looked at the packaging and guess what the side effect was lack of vitamin B12 ............BINGO ........... the next day armed with this information she marched with my dad to the GP he was a neighbor and stated the obvious, he didnt quite believe it but said he would look it up and well, that day they took my dad off the pills and gave his the B12 and he is was back to normal with in a month, brought a new Jag and wont let me drive it.
Our Friend in Spain has been diagnosed with the same and he was given medication along side he had been given B12 and told that he must always take them. So if the Spanish local doctor does this why didnt the Specialist my father had been seeing for over 5 year know the same.