"Staff amazing, food disgusting."

firstly the staff, reception, surgeon, nursing staff who provided my aftercare were all fantastic, dedicated, professional and caring, i cannot praise them enough. I was admitted for heart surgery.I had issues with high cholesterol and high blood sugar levels which for months before surgery i had worked hard to reduce eating a healthy suitable diet, including no carbohydrates or fatty foods.

I assumed that with the hospital being a private hospital that care would be taken to provide patients with a nutritious menu to suit all requirements, this sadly was not the case. The menu consisted of ten main courses, eight of which were pasta the other two being chicken casserole and dumplings or chicken curry and rice, both of which i tried as apart from soup were the only hot options available that had the least amount of carbs, both i would describe as 'slop' the only other options were sandwiches, soup, fruit, cereal and yoghurt. I lived off soup, yoghurt and fruit for the remainder of my stay as that was all that was edible. I have visited the Alex years ago and recall the menu being excellent but apparently the food is now prepared by outside contractors.This is not a slur on the catering staff who were as helpful as they could be given what they had to work with, this is a criticism of management who it would seem are more interested in giving their patients low cost disgusting non nutritious slop than providing them with a nutritious menu to aid their recovery. Very poor service and negligent after care as nutrition plays such an important part of the aftercare and healing process. Another criticism of management is the hours they were expecting their nursing staff to work long hours sometimes 14 hr shifts day after day which almost led to a mistake being made whereby an extremely tired nurse brought medication into me thinking i was another patient, luckily she greeted me with what she thought was my name and i was able to correct her before being given the wrong medication!!

I would like to make it clear, the staff are amazing, doing a fantastic job in difficult circumstances, it would seem that it is management who need to look closely at their own performance in providing the care patients require in respect of nutritious food and in looking after the welfare of their staff to ensure potentially dangerous mistakes are not made by exhausted staff who are overworked and expected to work longer hours than are safe.