A 74-YEAR-OLD woman from Enfield who successfully campaigned for better hospital standards several years ago is voicing fresh criticisms of in-patient care at Barnet Hospital after undergoing cancer surgery.

Joyce Wiles, a retired grandmother from Crews Hill, was in Barnet Hospital for four days in June after a mastectomy for breast cancer and claims nurses were impatient and unskilled, doctors did not have time to see her and buzzers and water were often out of reach.

During her stay, she said nurses moved bedside tables for their observations, leaving water and buzzers out of reach, and requests for assistance from other bed-bound patients were often left unanswered.

She said: “I worked in Southgate Beaumont Care Home since I retired and we would wrap buzzers around patients’ hands and make sure water was within reach at night. When I got to hospital I thought, they just don’t do that here.”

She claims nurses attending to her struggled to secure cannula drips. She said: “I have a needle phobia and a horror of cannula coming out, so it was very distressing for me.”

When she was told she could go home four days after the operation, she was advised that she might have towait seven hours for her prescription to be ready from the hospital pharmacy. She decided to leave immediately and sent her son to collect the medication in the evening.

Medication she was given caused diarrhoea for seven days but she claims she was not seen by a doctor concerning the problem.

Mrs Wiles had previously raised concerns about waiting times for prescriptions at Chase Farm Hospital pharmacy when her husband, who was suffering from fatal lymphatic cancer, went home without painkillers or a prescription in 1996.

Her complaints then led to a new system for reissuing patients’ own drugs, saving over £66,000 a year and enabling more pharmacy staff to be employed.

She said: “They did all the things I asked for. But they seem to have fallen by the wayside. It’s hard to believe such a difference.”

A large supportive family and a shared sense of humour helped her through the ordeal but she is determined not to suffer in silence. She sent a five-page letter of complaint to 13 people including Conservative MP Nick de Bois.

She added: “I said I don’t particularly want apologies or compensation, I just want things to run properly.”

A Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust spokesperson said: “We take all complaints that are raised seriously and we will conduct a full investigation into the issues that she has raised.”

An NHS trust complaints co-ordinator has promised to meet Mrs Wiles to discuss her complaints later this month.