"A&E"

We attended the A&E department of Good Hope Hospital on 6/07/18 at 11pm. My wife was not seen by a Doctor but triaged by a nurse at 12:30pm and taken for a x-ray. We had to then wait until 3:30pm for the x-ray to be interpreted by an on duty doctor. We were told by reception that there was only one doctor on duty between majors and minors. To wait this long is unacceptable. It took more than a hour and a half to assess my needs and then a further 3 hours to report in the x-ray and deliver any further treatment. I personally think to have one on doctor between the majors and minors and to make patients wait this long is totally unacceptable. Surely there must be a system in place for the number of doctors on any shift at anytime. I know of primariy care providers that have to have contingency plans in case there is an earthquake or terrorist attack, so instead of focusing on something with such low risk, would it not make sense to focus on plans on number of doctors to patients ratio?

The nursing staff unfortunately do not possess the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment that a doctor can. I feel this A&E service is not taking into account or demonstrating a commitment to identifying and responding to the needs of any patients, because when waiting times were fed back to reception staff they were not interested in the slightest. I was not even given an opportunity to give any comments or feedback in any other way of form.

When reporting to reception at the A&E I don’t don’t feel any of the patients were treated with kindness or compassion. Whilst sitting and watching other patients check in at reception, you feel as if the reception staff are just crunching numbers and signing and logging patients in and it being a chore. If anybody sat in reception and observed this you can just see it blatantly. Although I can understand some of the patients checking in at that time of the day can be challenging there are many others that are genuinely unwell. There were no drinking water facilities available to us as patients, unless you had the courage to disturb the unapproachable receptionists sitting behind the glass screen, which would almost be responded with a roll of the eyes and ‘If you

Must’ look.

The waiting room was filthy, littered with food and drink wrappers everywhere.