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"Poor pain relief in A&E"

About: East Surrey Hospital / Accident and emergency

(as a friend),

I was accompanying a friend who had a nasty head/facial injury. Whilst the medical/nursing team were very thorough in A&E and were very prompt in dealing with his injury and their concerns about a possible eye injury, I feel that that they failed to address his pain levels and give analgesia within a reasonable time. I could see my friend was in a lot of pain (rolling the head from side to side, holding the head and moaning with the pain are pretty indicative of someone being in severe pain) so I asked numerous members of staff (treating doctor, nurses and whoever I could grab as they went past or popped in the cubicle!) if he could have some analgesia. I was told that they were concerned about his possible eye injury and were prioritising that and then when I kept asking was repeatedly  told; yes, in a minute, or yes, we'll organise that, or yes, we need to get the doctor to write it up... and so on.  Nothing happened, and after an hour and a half of waiting for analgesia I began to get cross and had to almost stand over a nurse to get them to give him his analgesia there and then. They were obviously quite disgruntled by my demands, saying that they had only been made aware he needed analgesia in the previous 15 mins. So clearly, there seems to be a lack of communication between staff and I feel that leaving him for 1 and a half hours in severe pain was unacceptable. 

He was finally given IV Morphine and was immediately sick, so I don't think an anti-emetic was given with it, which I would have thought should have been standard to give with Morphine. And then within 5 minutes the Doctor came to tell him he could go home, even though he'd just had Morphine and had been sick. We had to ask for the IV cannula to be removed, which the Doctor did and just gave him a bit of gauze with no instruction to put pressure on it for a few minutes, so it promptly bled from the IV site. I then had to ask for analgesia for my friend to take home as I knew paracetamol probably wouldn't have been sufficient.,He was then given some co-codamol, but I don't think he would have been given anything had I not asked. And had we not asked, the cannula would have been left in. 

The other comment I would make that it's really difficult to identify staff roles and half the time you don't know if you're speaking to a trained nurse, doctor or HCA. There seems to be so many different uniforms/work gear and their name badges are not always that easy to see/read unless you really peer closely.

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Responses

Response from Ben Mearns, Chief of Medicine, Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust 6 years ago
Ben Mearns
Chief of Medicine,
Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust

Doctor

Submitted on 24/01/2018 at 17:57
Published on Care Opinion on 25/01/2018 at 09:06


picture of Ben Mearns

Dear charafx78

I'm very sorry to hear about your friend and the lack of pain relief in ED. This is a high priority for us and I will ask the matron to ensure that they share your feedback with the department.


If your friend would like to email me with their details I can arrange for the matron to look into the matter on an individual basis so that we might learn why it happened and seek to prevent it for someone else. My email address is ben.mearns@nhs.net.

I do hope that your friend is OK.

Kindest regards

Ben

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