"Catheter fitting"

After a scheduled ultrasound scan of my abdomen I was found to be holding 4x the capacity of my bladder and immediately passed through to A&E.

After an initial assessment I waited for five hours to see a doctor and had a urethral catheter inserted. It was inserted extremely roughly and was very painful for over a week. I was then left to sit in A&E waiting area with my trousers undone and a tube from my catheter coming out to a container to measure the output. I was there for another 5 hours before the container tube was removed and a night bag fitted.

I was given no instruction or proper equipment other than to contact my GP the following morning to refer me to the Community Nurse team. This was done but then there was some confusion as to whether the community nurse or the urology nurse was to follow up. I went 4 days attached to the original night bag with no straps or replacements until a community nurse came with some proper bags and straps and showed my what to do.

Following surgery I had a suprapubic catheter inserted replacing the urethral one but unfortunately this failed one night and I had to go to UTC to have a urethral catheter inserted. This was once again done in a rush and was very painful, leaving me with mobility problems for the following week.

My experience of having catheters fitted by community or urology nurses is completely different as they take their time, usually 3-4 minutes rather than the 20 seconds in A&E and UTC.