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Communication isn't good at all

Posted By attendantwf66

"Communication isn't good at all"

About: North Devon District Hospital / Radiology (X-ray) North Devon District Hospital / Trauma and orthopaedics

(as a service user),

This has happened to other people, including me. I rang the orthopaedic interface up today about an upcoming appointment and to change the time. I was told then that I had an appointment today and I didn’t know about this. I have had no letters or phone calls previously and if I hadn’t queried this I wouldn’t have ever known. I am too far away to attend the appointment today- my circumstances make this impossible.

In my experience, communication within the radiology department isn’t good at all. When I do try and call I can’t ever seem to get through- they have their own reception desk but I can never get through at any point in the day. In addition, the orthop interface can’t seem to get through either, neither can the main hospital or switch board.

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Responses

Response from Gill Kite, Superintendent Radiographer/Radiology Governance Lead (Northern Services), Radiology, North Devon District Hospital (Northern Services), Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust nearly 2 years ago
Gill Kite
Superintendent Radiographer/Radiology Governance Lead (Northern Services), Radiology, North Devon District Hospital (Northern Services),
Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

I am a Diagnostic Radiographer with many years experience of working, and imaging patients, in all areas of the Radiology department. I am also responsible for the governance in Radiology and so make sure that we are compliant with the many ionising radiation regulations that dictate what we can and can't do in radiology, keep the patients and staff safe and ensure we are practicing safely. I also deal with our policies and procedures and oversee compliments, complaints and quality.

Submitted on 25/09/2023 at 10:17
Published on Care Opinion at 10:17

picture of Gill Kite

Dear attendantwf66,

Thank you for taking the time to leave feedback about your experience, I'm sorry that it hasn't been a positive one and completely understand your frustration.

Whilst we do have a reception desk in radiology this is purely to attend patients arriving for imaging, all of the admin and appointments team for radiology work out of an office area elsewhere on site at NDDH. Like other areas of the NHS at the moment we have been experiencing issues due to lack of staff availability and so there is often difficulty in getting through to the admin team and a delay in getting back to people who have left messages on the answerphones, for which I can only apologise.

If you would like to contact me separately (gillian.kite@nhs.net or 01271 322779) then I would be happy to discuss this with you further and see where the particular issue has been, either with the orthopaedic interface clinic or radiology or both, and hopefully resolve it for the future.

Kind regards

Gill

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Response from Gill Kite, Superintendent Radiographer/Radiology Governance Lead (Northern Services), Radiology, North Devon District Hospital (Northern Services), Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust nearly 2 years ago
We have made a change
Gill Kite
Superintendent Radiographer/Radiology Governance Lead (Northern Services), Radiology, North Devon District Hospital (Northern Services),
Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

I am a Diagnostic Radiographer with many years experience of working, and imaging patients, in all areas of the Radiology department. I am also responsible for the governance in Radiology and so make sure that we are compliant with the many ionising radiation regulations that dictate what we can and can't do in radiology, keep the patients and staff safe and ensure we are practicing safely. I also deal with our policies and procedures and oversee compliments, complaints and quality.

Submitted on 02/10/2023 at 12:55
Published on Care Opinion at 13:09

picture of Gill Kite

Dear attendantwf66,

I just to let you know that following your feedback we have made a change to improve the communication with our appointments team and with access to radiology.

We now have more admin staff available working on the busy areas like appointments and queries during office hours so that patients can contact us easier and also staff available to check and reply to the answerphone messages left outside of office hours; the admin team have also set up email addresses for each modality, for example X-ray, CT, MRI & ultrasound appointments, that will be added to the patient letters in future, again to make contact easier.

Its a small change in an ongoing review process but it will hopefully make our service more accessible for patients as well as other departments in the hospital.

Kind regards

Gill

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