PRIVATE CARE FOR PATIENTS WITH BREAST CANCER: ADMISSION TO HOSPITAL.
PREPARING FOR OPERATION
Admission to hospital
When you arrive at the hospital, the receptionist will contact the admissions department, and a ward receptionist will come to collect you. If you are paying for your stay in hospital yourself, you will probably be asked to pay your bill in advance at this stage if you have not already done so. Otherwise, you will be asked for your completed insurance form. The ward receptionist will take you to your room – probably a single or double room -and show you the facilities available there. You are likely to have a private bathroom, a television, and a telephone by your bed. The ward receptionist will explain hospital procedures to you, and will leave you to settle in.
The main difference you are likely to notice if you have been treated in an NHS hospital before, is that this time there is much less waiting for all the routine hospital procedures to be dealt with. The nurse to patient ratio is higher in private hospitals and so someone is usually available to deal with the pre-operative procedures quite quickly.
Your consultant will deal with your medical care throughout your stay, will visit you before the operation, perform the operation (with the assistance of the anesthetist and the operating staff), and visit you again when you are back in your own room. Trainees – whether doctors or nurses – do not work in private hospitals. The consultants are responsible for their own patients and supervise their care themselves. Most private hospitals now have resident medical officers – fully qualified, registered doctors who are available 24 hours a day to deal with any emergencies which may arise.
Preparing for your operation
When the time for your operation approaches, a porter and nurse will take you from your room to the anesthetic room. In many private hospitals, you will not be moved from your bed onto a trolley until you have been anaesthetized; the bed itself will be wheeled from your room. Similarly, you will be transferred back from the trolley to your own bed in the recovery room while you are still asleep. You therefore go to sleep and wake up in your own hospital bed.
When you are fully awake, you will be taken back to your room to rest.
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