I was on ward 7 at Ninewells Hospital after being admitted through A&E earlier in the day due to terrible pain in my stomach. I'm deaf and my interpreter had left at 5 pm after I was transferred to the ward. I was then moved to another bed in the same ward. At 1:30 am I was told by staff I was to be moved to another ward. When I asked that a BSL interpreter be called to explain what was going on, my request was ignored by staff.
I was moved to another ward, which I thought was strange. At around 4 am I found out it was a ward for cancer patients and this made me very upset. Thinking that they must have moved me there because I have cancer. I'd recently found a lump in my breast so I was terrified. I didn't sleep and was so anxious I was physically shaking. I was bawling my eyes out for hours until one of the staff said they should send me back to Ward 7.
This ward also didn't call the interpreter to come to explain anything about what was going on. One of the staff was very nice to me, but the other member of staff was very rude and refused to take their mask off when speaking to me- I cannot lipread if I can't see your lips.
At around 4:40 am I was transferred back to Ward 7, and I didn't get the opportunity to communicate with any of the staff with an interpreter until 8:45 am, when the interpreter came in to interpret for doctors rounds.
Being deaf in hospital is a very scary experience as lots of things happen to you that you're not consulted about because there is no interpreter. I know that at Ninewells you can get a BSL interpreter 24/7, so why the staff didn't call them I don't know, but I was left frightened and very upset by the whole situation. They didn't even try to explain by writing things down for me in detail. They were very brief in the information they gave me.
I also have a colostomy bag (stoma), and when I asked for a new bag to change, the staff left me for two hours without a clean bag to change the old one out.
This is a BSL translation by a member of staff at NHS Tayside.
"Not calling the BSL interpreter"
About: NHS Tayside / Corporate Equalities Team NHS Tayside Corporate Equalities Team DD2 1UB Ninewells Hospital / Acute Surgical Receiving Unit Ninewells Hospital Acute Surgical Receiving Unit Dundee DD1 9SY
Posted by Corker89 (as ),
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