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"Full of admiration for all staff"

About: Borders General Hospital / Acute Assessment Unit Scottish Ambulance Service / Emergency Ambulance

(as the patient),

Yesterday I was admitted to Acute Assessment Unit, Borders general hospital. I have nothing but praise for all my treatment. Ambulance Crew, Consultants, Nurses, Doctors, pharmacists, Radiographers, Tea lady, Porters. I was a bit traumatized but I was always well cared for and reassured. It was a long day but with patience and understanding and although the end result was a bit alarming I am full of admiration for all staff at the BORDERS GENERAL HOSPITAL.

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Responses

Response from Lynn Mccallum, Consultant Physician. Clinical Director of Unscheduled Care, Acute Medicine, NHS Borders

picture of Lynn Mccallum

Dear Beechbank,


Thank you so much for taking the time to tell us of your experience with the Acute Assessment Unit at the Borders General Hospital.

AAU is a relatively new clinical area for NHS Borders and endeavours to provide appropriate and timely investigations with a view to trying to avoid having to admit that individual into hospital. Sometimes there can be delays or waits for investigations and on occasion this can be frustrating and time consuming. However, we have been working hard on improving this experience and in order to do this, have involved the multitude of individuals that you have so kindly mentioned in your story. Of course doctors and nurses are important in the delivery of healthcare but so often we forget about the amazing staff members that provide nourishment, transport, investigations, information about new drugs etc and the reality is, that not one of us could do our jobs without this amazing team around about us.

I'm sorry that your visit and indeed the end outcome was traumatising and I hope that we were able to explain everything to you in order to provide reassurance. I also very much hope that you are now on the road to recovery!

I will forward your kind words on to the staff in AAU and I assure you that they will be enormously pleased at the positive experience that you had.

With best wishes,

Lynn
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Response from John Alexander, Head of Service, Scottish Borders, Scottish Ambulance Service

Thanks for taking the time to let us know about your experience, it is always good to get positive feedback, particularly when it includes ambulance staff who are very often the first point of contact patient have with their journey through the NHS system. I will pass on your comments to the crew involved. Thank you

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