"Too many people"

Thank you ever so much for taking the time to share your feedback and we are really sorry to read that you experienced an extremely long and uncomfortable wait to receive care for your father in A&E.

As you have noted, we have been experiencing very busy service in our A&E department recently, which does lead to operational pressures and some long waits to be seen and treated. Due to the nature of an Emergency Department, service delivery will be variable due to capacity, demand and clinical acuity. The sickest patient will always be triaged to be seen first. We endeavour to keep all patients up to date with projected waiting times and offer alternative options to be seen through our streaming and triage services if we feel a more appropriate option is available for timely patient review. Where we do stream patients to different parts of the department, each of those parts of A&E can experience different waiting time pressures at different times so that can also influence how long patients unfortunately have to wait.

There are other streams for receiving care and treatment for non-urgent medical issues, such as the Minor Injuries Unit at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital which is open 8am-8pm every day, the GP Collaborative service which offers out of hours appointments (6pm-8am on weekdays and 24 hours over Weekends and Bank Holidays), offering treatment for patients with minor or less urgent illnesses, and the Walk In Centre on Broad Lane in the City Centre where advice and treatment can be accessed, which is open from 8am- 10pm every day. If you are experiencing an immediate medical issue which is not an emergency, we recommend calling 111 for advice on the most appropriate service to access.

We very much apologise to you and your father for the very poor experience you had in the waiting room. We try our best to manage the waiting room but struggle to provide the necessary staff resource to undertake the often challenging conversations with patients and their carers/relatives/friends whilst also providing patient care within the department. Patient experience in the waiting room is currently a high priority for additional focus from the A&E Management Team and they have already commenced a project to explore how to improve the sometimes unavoidable waiting experience.

If you would like us to investigate this matter and provide you with more information specific to your situation, please contact our PALS team on 0114 271 2400 or by emailing sth.pals@nhs.net. The PALS team will ask you to share some personal details in order for us to investigate this matter for you.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish your father all the best with any ongoing care or treatment.