"Waiting time for Trauma Surgery Fracture"

So, three days ago my wife suffered an injury while walking back home from work.  She fell down on slippery pavement and fractured her small finger into two pieces.  We went to A&E that night at Tameside general, they were very helpful we must say, apart from the waiting time. One of the staff member told us about their frustration regarding the IT system they have at NHS and we experienced this first hand.  A&E Nurse was not able to put the request through to X-Ray department 10 steps away from her desk, and we ended up waiting 4 hours before the X-Ray was done, we felt this is really unacceptable and frustrating in today's time and age where technology is putting people's lives at risk.

Anyway, so we were referred to Orthopedic department for following days's appointment, and experience was even worse.  We waited for more than 3 hours beyond our appointment time to be seen by the consultant. Finally we got our turn, where the consultant suggested we need to go to urgent surgery to get this fixed, and informed us  to go to the trauma centre. While we were in the cabin we heard the situation explained to another staff member over the phone regarding the urgency as the bone is snapped in half and it's really painful, again all the staff members were really helpful and seemed concerned with patients.

On the  third day, she is still in pain, we are using the bandage that A&E nurse gave us for now and still waiting for that miracle phone call to let us know when we can expect the surgery.

With our experience so far, all we want to say is NHS bosses perhaps need to look in to the operating system & perhaps invest into planning and IT, as we don't seem to see this could happen due to staff shortage only, system in place is perhaps more to be blamed.

By writing this we are in no way blaming any of the NHS staff or the organisation in anyway.  The soul purpose of this review is knowledge sharing and more towards a hope to improve current services at our beloved NHS.