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Communication with patients needs to be improved

Posted By DenCam

"Communication with patients needs to be improved"

About: Accidents & Emergency / Phone First

(as a service user),

First of all I am a nurse so I am acutely aware of the pressures in the system, however my recent experience was very disappointing.

I fractured my ankle whilst on holiday. I have an x-ray and letter from the hospital I attended. I know I need to attend a fracture clinic so contacted phone first rather than just arrive at A&E. They told me to attend the nurse practitioner at Antrim Area Hospital.

When I arrived I was informed that although I was told to come at 1, I would not be seen at 1 - I expected that. However, I have now been sitting on a chair in the corridor for 4.5  hours without anyone coming to see me. The only response I can get is I am on the list.

Other people have come through from ED and Minor Injury Unit directly and gone to x-ray,  but myself and others who come through phone first are still waiting.

There is a shortage of chairs and space. I have a fractured ankle that is supposed to be elevated but there is hardly a chair to sit on never mind somewhere to put my leg up! Every time someone walks past they almost knock my leg. I don’t even understand why I have been directed to come here rather than given an appointment for the fracture clinic. Some communication from staff here would be very appreciated. 

If this space is to be used for so many people more chairs and appropriate facilities are required.

Communication with patients needs to be improved 

The phone first service does not appear to be effective and giving a time to come here is misleading as everyone else is prioritised and I don’t mean majors as that would be understandable. 

I will not use this service again. I understood it to be a way of triaging and spacing out the number of people of attending but had I just come to ED  myself and bypassed phone first I  would most likely have been seen by now. 

All in all a very frustrating experience and although I am a great supporter of the Health service I will not be recommending this system to anyone.  

Still waiting and even more frustrated. 

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Responses

Response from Cathy McCoy, Clinical Service Manager, Acute Medicine, NHSCT 2 weeks ago
Cathy McCoy
Clinical Service Manager, Acute Medicine,
NHSCT

Submitted on 20/05/2024 at 12:53
Published on Care Opinion at 12:53

Dear DenCam

thank you for taking the time to feedback re; our service. You are absolutely right Phone First was designed to be a way of triaging and spacing out the number of people of attending ED at anyone time. This is why you are given a slot to attend and not an appointment time. However all ED departments in the region are under significant pressure leading to increasing waits to be seen and an accumulation of patients waiting to be seen. We have recently added a second waiting area into our foot print and removed DR minors from the ED department completely but we still finding that we do not have enough space.

Unfortunately you cannot directly book into a fracture clinic you need to be referred by ED staff as it is a separate service outside of ED which is why you had to wait to be seen.

I apologies that you had to wait so long to be seen as a senior managers in ED we continually review waiting times and processes within the service to try and ensure we are doing our best with the resources that we have but unfortunately at present space is our main problem

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