Leanne's Story

For our Better Care = Safer Care campaign, Leanne shares her experience of being in hospital. She shares the impact staff shortages and the chaotic environment had on her recovery from postnatal depression.

I have spent 11 weeks as an inpatient in three different locations, including five weeks at a Mother and Baby unit (MBU) away from home. In the MBU unit, the idea was that you'd each get assigned a nursery nurse. You were supposed to have a set group of staff who’d act as your support people. But in fact, that changed so much, that you often didn't even ever see those particular staff. So, you'd have different staff at different times.

The regular staff knew how to do the nightly checks in a way which was fine. They sometimes needed to use a torch, but they usually stayed outside the door. But quite a few times when we had the agency staff coming in, they didn't know how to check that the baby was okay.

About three times, I was woken up and there was a man standing next to the baby's bed with his hand on his chest, checking that my baby was breathing. I was thinking that before people start a night shift, giving them training on how to do checks in a way that isn’t stressful or intrusive would be really important.

I also noticed the staff didn't have time to do things. There was even a list of the meal times up on the wall, but it had come down partly, so you couldn’t actually see when the meal times were. I thought that was a sign to show how pushed the staff were, because they didn't have time to correct that the whole duration of my stay.

You had to wait such a long time to see a member of staff if you just wanted to go out. The environment was so changeable and chaotic, that I basically just wanted to stay in my room all day. It was really hard to stay well within that situation.

When you’re inpatient, some of the work is reconnecting with yourself, remembering your life before and trying to find reasons to keep living. Sometimes that means just getting outside to feel the sunshine, but you couldn’t even go for a quick walk because the staff were so busy.

Moving back home after receiving inpatient care in another area was really hard. I'd already made all these strong connections with staff members; people I’d shared intimate parts of my life with. The fact I was never going to see them again felt like a sudden and extreme cut-off.

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