If the Royal Free was properly managed it could cut exactly half of its staff without affecting the services it provides. My mother has been there several times recently and on every single occasion has been there twice as long as necessary. Why? All the

If the Royal Free was properly managed it could cut exactly half of its staff without affecting the services it provides.

My mother has been there several times recently and on every single occasion has been there twice as long as necessary. Why? All the staff were kind and caring, but the support and management systems were sorely lacking.

My mother needed an x-ray and no-one knew whether she'd had it or not (involving another day's stay).

When she fell out of bed trying to crawl to the toilet this needed another two nights stay for x-ray (one would have sufficed, but by the time the hurried x-ray department discovered they should have done two instead of one, another night's stay was needed to get to the front of the queue).

There was another mix-up over her endoscopy (another two nights) and a three-hour wait because they'd run out of blood-testing 'pods' and didn't have any spare staff to fetch them.

ML

(full name and address supplied)