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"Recent hospital admission"

About: Royal Hospital for Children and Young People (Edinburgh)

(as a parent/guardian),

I am unfortunately a frequent visitor to the Royal hospital for children Edinburgh with my daughter, due to medical conditions. 

On this admission my child is here for just now, I have discovered that the hospital canteen within the building does not serve any form of decent meal on a lunch time; for example macaroni,  instead now it is soup or a pastry. 

 I would like to know how this is seen as acceptable to serve to parents, and also sometimes patients that do not like the food trolley meals. 

On the back of that, there was also the option to have the choice of the small café on the ground floor which now is also closed for the foreseeable future.

Again this was somewhere to have a hot drink and a small light lunch. Service was also quick and pleasant staff, which is more than can be said for the main canteen.

Quick service with easy accessibility is what is required most of the time for parents when in hospital with their child as they don't want to leave them for too long. 

Given that the small café has closed, there is the voluntary shop that has options and there is a coffee machine. I'm there, but can't get that until 3.30pm so how is that any good to visitors and parents, along side staff.  

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Responses

Response from Danny Gillan, Head of Soft Facilities Management, Facilities, NHS Lothian 12 months ago
Danny Gillan
Head of Soft Facilities Management, Facilities,
NHS Lothian
Submitted on 09/05/2023 at 09:30
Published on Care Opinion at 09:30


Dear gammahs35,

We apologise for your poor experience of our catering service. We are presently reviewing our retail catering service provision to staff and public throughout NHS Lothian with a view to making this as good and cost effective as possible, and a group has now been established to do this. Within this work a programme of catering surveys will be undertaken on sites to allow further decisions and developments to be made. At this stage the initial service changes that we have made are just settling in and a number of operational issues are being resolved including food choices, opening times, equipment and staffing levels. The review group will review the activity in all outlets and take account of the feedback from the surveys in informing decisions. We anticipate the outcome of this review by early summer 2023. Your comment through the Care Opinion website will be included in our decision making and we thank you for taking the time to contact us.

Kind regards,

Danny Gillan

Head of Soft Facilities Management

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