"SAS - transport service"

My wife has used SAS Patient Transport for over 3 years to get to kidney dialysis three times a week. This has been an excellent service and all the SAS staff, without exception, are professional, kind, caring and compassionate.  They are unsung heroes.

My wife had a kidney transplant 5 weeks ago and is currently suffering complications, which require short notice visits to QEUH.  We live a 2 hour trip from QEUH, Glasgow.  She was picked up this morning, one hour early and taken up to QEUH by Patient Transport for an appointment arranged by the Transplant Clinic on Monday.

When the Patient Transport driver arrived on the ward to bring my wife home. The nurse explained that transport had not yet been requested as the surgeon had not seen my wife following her scan.  The nurse phoned Patient Transport Control to be told, in no uncertain terms, that if my wife did not go with the driver right now that she would have to make her own way home. 

The nurse explained that the ward was full so they could not give my wife a bed and that she was 5 weeks post transplant and on immuno-suppressants so could not travel on public transport.  The response, again, was that if she didn't go with the driver now that she would have to make her own way home. My wife and the nurse were left to choose between her seeing the surgeon, which was the main reason for the visit to QEUH, and getting home. They took the difficult decision for my wife to go home, this was only acceptable to the Nurse as my wife is back at Transplant Clinic the following day and could be seen by the surgeon then.

To cause further insult to injury, when my wife and the driver got down to the ambulance her transport had been aborted. Thankfully the driver had compassion and common sense and brought my wife home. 

We understand that all NHS services are stretched, but I don't believe one department (SAS) making another department's (Transplant Clinic) work more challenging and difficult than it already is helps neither department deliver an acceptable service. I believe working in the NHS at the moment  is a pressured job, infighting helps no one. I think some of the call handlers need to remember that there is a person at the centre of this.