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Care Opinion

Long wait for information

Posted By kels0787

"Long wait for information"

About: Craigavon Area Hospital / Emergency Department

(as a relative),

My Granny is in her eighties was brought into A&E by ambulance at 7.30pm on a Sunday evening. It is now 18.5 hours later & I have been unable to speak to a member of staff.  

I am her NOK & no one has contacted me in those 18.5 hours to give me an update on her health. I myself have tried to get through to both the ambulance triage area & the green area of A&E 28 times & the phone has not been answered once. Other family members have been trying & we have only been able to get one of these numerous calls answered,  & the only information given at that point was that she had been moved from ambulance triage to the green area.
I consider it an absolute disgrace that as NOK, I have not received any update regarding my Granny's condition in over 18 hours. 
This is not the first time this has happened either. I left a previous comment on here  about exactly the same thing.  

Surely, there should be an obligation to inform NOK about what is happening with a loved one in a quicker time frame than 18.5 hours?  And counting.... 

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Responses

Response from Paul Smyth, Interim Head of Service Emergency Departments, Acute & Emergency Medicine, Southern Health and Social Care Trust 9 months ago
Paul Smyth
Interim Head of Service Emergency Departments, Acute & Emergency Medicine,
Southern Health and Social Care Trust

Submitted on 18/07/2023 at 12:20
Published on Care Opinion at 12:20

Dear kels0787

Certainly someone should have contacted you to give you an update in this time. I am not sure if another family member had accompanied your granny to ED, staff will not phone out and instead focus on getting them in the cubicle to stay with her.

It sounds like when your granny came to the emergency department it was quite over crowded. This has been happening daily as there are large numbers of patients delayed waiting on admission beds on the wards. There are usually on average 40 such patients that should be on inpatient wards each day. Unfortunately the emergency department only have 39 assessment cubicles and once these become unavailable there is no space to assess new patients arriving. Significant bed waits are the biggest cause of long waiting times to be assessed in ED.

I apologise you had not been contacted and appreciate this was a very worrying time for you. The ED team are working with patient flow and the inpatient teams to improve flow of patients through the department.

We hope your granny is recovering.

Kind regards

Paul Smyth

Head of Service (ED)

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