Dear Sir,

I have heard many stories about our hospital from many different people, mostly to do with the elderly. I would like for someone to do a study of how many deaths were recorded in the worst year, when general practitioners were allowed to tend to their own patients, and the worst year when they were taken out of the picture.

Since we are trying to make things better at the hospital, I would like to see a change in their system of dispensing medication. They have personal information in their computer system from patients’ passports. Unfortunately, my mother had a problem while in the hospital. They could not dispense her medication because her name on her passport is in Portuguese. She, however, used her English version all of her life.

As much as I tried to get them to just add in brackets the translation in English, they would not. Even though they know she is the same person, as she had ID proving this, they would not dispense medication to her.

I asked, would you rather she died? Their answer was, sorry it’s our protocol. So protocol before patients’ health? At a hospital?

I spent several days trying to get her named changed on the government computer system, but that didn’t happen, either. So I would like to see this system changed for the future, as my mother is no longer with us. Let common sense rule. I will be old and die before I stay in the hospital as it is now. I would rather die with dignity.

PAT BRANCO

Pembroke