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Disgraceful treatment

Story from nhs.uk

"Disgraceful treatment"

About: Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital

Firstly the triage nurse and a&e Doctor were brilliant. The nurses are great for the most part - they do their best in high pressure times with too many patients and not enough staff.Then it came to seeing the surgical team and someone making an actual decision.

Not 20 minutes after giving my daughter morphine for pain they tried to send her home in agony at 1am to come back for an appointment at 7am. Doctor and bed manager tried to put pressure on me to take her home but i refused. Now I fully understand the pressures on the NHS but to hear yourself being talked about in the corridor and saying "as long as it's not an admission" because they're sticking you on a short stay ward overnight "if they can't persuade you to go home" you can't help but feel it's all about the numbers because it certainly wasn't about the best patient care. I then find out despite being kept in overnight to manage pain, no pain relief was actually prescribed until after 7.30 am so 6 hours in pain. Absolute last time I come to this hospital by choice for me or any of my family.

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Responses

Response from Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital 7 years ago
Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital

Submitted on 24/01/2017 at 15:42
Published on nhs.uk on 25/01/2017 at 01:35

Dear Sir/Madam,

I was very disappointed to read about the poor experience you and your daughter had at our hospital, I am so sorry that your daughter was in pain for so long, this is certainly not how we want any of our patients to feel. There has been a lot of pressure on the Emergency Department over the Winter months, with very high attendances, however there is no excuse for making patients feel that they are not receiving the care that they need, and I can only apologise that this was the case for you and your daughter. To overhear those comments is not acceptable, no matter the pressures on the staff, and please be assured that I will be passing this review onto the emergency team for them to learn from and reflect upon. I hope this may go some way to reassuring you that we are continuously trying to improve our care for patients.

I am very grateful that despite the time you’ve had, you have mentioned the nurses and doctors who provided excellent care to you, this will be much appreciated by the staff.

As I am sure you can understand with the nature of your review, I would like to look into your daughters case in more detail, however due to the anonymity of the post I am limited in my actions. Please, with your daughters permission, can you send her details to patient.experience@northumbria-healthcare.nhs.uk to enable me to do so.

I do hope your daughter got the treatment that she needed.

Kind regards,

Jessica

Jessica Mallach – Head of Quality Improvement and Patient Experience

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