between chairs in waiting room. Volunteers helping as soon as you enter the Hospital. Temperature checks, clean masks provided sanitizing liquid available in lots of areas. Entrance and exit in different places, so no crossover of patients. Clear instructions on what to do whilst waiting for minor operation, tests booked 4 and 2 days before operation, unfortunately operation cancelled due to third lockdown. Have full confidence in the safety controls at this Hospital
appointments in July, August, Sept and Nov 2020 to help me manage with masked speakers as I am deaf and otherwise lipread. In the September appointment I had some issues where clinical staff didn't know the interpreter should stay with me throughout procedures. I had to argue for 45 mins with the pre-procedure nurse about keeping the interpreter with me, he kept saying I was hearing well, not understanding that I knew his script, the questions they ask every time they do a procedure as this is my 5th or 6th. The nurse also gave me weird behaviour, accusing me of lying because he felt I didn't need the interpreter because my speech is good and I could hear that he was speaking. The doctor also tried to refuse the interpreter entry so I had to argue with him too. The ROH also hadn't booked the interpreter for long enough but she was able to arrange to stay. I also had issues where the procedure was much more painful than it should have been and the recovery nurses were too distracted by the novelty of the interpreter to listen to me trying to say (and the interpreter trying to get them to listen to me saying) that I was in a lot of pain. Eventually I gave up and ate my own painmeds and let them discharge me home without managed pain. Clinician friends gave me advice on how to let the ROH know the above had happened to get it dealt with, by flagging it as a professional practice issue. The deputy director of nursing responded to my written report in detail, answered my questions and when it was safer, met with me to discuss the issues I raised and some other Accessible Information Standards glitches. It turned out the ROH had clear masks but they had got stored away without being distributed. My report meant someone remembered them, realised what they were needed for and got them distributed widely across the hospital. I have since been able to use clear masks at hospital appointments which is easier than relying on an interpreter as I can lipread what is spoken for myself. Especially with a surgery consent appointment where the language used is above my BSL capacity by a fair bit. I felt the ROH handled the report well and genuinely understood the extra covid challenges and that I was scared of retaliation from staff. They also have a very good BSL interpreter booking process which has worked every time I needed it apart from 1 short booking which has been acknowledged. Unfortunately they don't have such good processes for Speech to Text Reporting (captioning) and are going to look into that as the AIS includes non-BSL options as many deaf and deafblind people do not sign at all.
Outpatient Clinic was well run, Covid-19 rules observed, relevant space between chairs in waiting room. Volunteers helping as soon as you enter the Hospital. Temperature checks, clean masks provided sanitizing...
I got ROH to book me BSL/English interpreters for f2f appointments in July, August, Sept and Nov 2020 to help me manage with masked speakers as I am deaf and...
