"Trying to access Simple Wound Care"

I had I & D surgery recently at the brilliant and wonderful Queen's Hospital and was given discharge paperwork which included information on where to book for the replacement of my bandages for 48 hours later.

This turned out to be Barking and Dagenham borough, Barking Hospital, which was stipulated as the only outlet offering weekend service for this. It was also stipulated in bold, that weekend appointments for residents living in all three boroughs would be included, which involved my borough of Havering. But online booking showed the next appointment not available until June.

So I telephoned and the receptionist seemed to be trying to put me off right at the outset stating initially that I should go to somewhere in my borough and not Barking snd Dagenham and so on, but when I informed them that I had read the information I had been given by Queen's Hospital, they then said they would check to see what was available and promptly told me there was nothing until June and advised me to go to an A&E in Havering . 

So my concern is this: The service is simple wound care, so how on earth do you roster changing bandages into an extended diary? I mean is it even possible? How could a health services provider change bandages two weeks later? Or schedule bandaging for much later, it’s ridiculous. My bandage needs changing 48 hours after surgery so hence why somewhere needs to operate a weekend service for change that falls on a certain day.

So the Queens same day surgery unit within A&E, then told me that I could go to general A&E at Queens if I could not get a nurse elsewhere, and wait there to be streamed back to them.

So this could be one reason why A&Es everywhere are inundated, because departments that should be scheduling in their patients back to their own departments for simple after care, especially the first wound redressing where they can check to see if anything is wrong, are not.

Also, I suggest that GP practices could be made to ensure that the nurses they hire should be qualified to change simple wound surgery bandages . 

My surgery has a nurse who also administers intra muscular injections, and I don’t know what else, and yet I was told she doesn’t do bandage changes.

Why not? is the question. 

There is nothing complicated to changing a simple wound bandage for goodness sake.

So my surgery could have dealt with me in five to ten minutes, I would have gone 24 hours early to change this bandage if necessary, but no, instead I am here with a blood stained bandage that is now pulling on my wound.

And tomorrow I and hundreds of others will be sat or stood waiting, probably for six, seven, eight or nine hours in A&E with anxiety biting at our minds and hearts as we wonder if we will be mussed out somehow and are waiting for nothing and not daring to move away to go to the toilet or get a drink if we are there alone.