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X-Ray Department Reception

Story from nhs.uk

"X-Ray Department Reception"

About: Royal Oldham Hospital

Attended X-Ray Department with my 83 year old father. I handed in a letter from his dentist requesting an x-ray before the removal of several of his teeth. The male receptionist was extremely unpleasant. He stated that because my father's details regarding his address and date of birth were not on the letter from the dentist he could not be seen by the radiographer. He was very arrogant and dismissive. He suggested we return to the dentist in Mossley to change the paperwork, however this was not possible because my father has cancer and he was distressed upon hearing he'd need to come back on another day. I decided to call the dentist who in turn called the x-ray reception and resolved this issue with a female receptionist.

Staff could be just a little bit kinder to patients who arrive at reception. They have no idea about people's back story and how easy it is to upset elderly patients.

P.S. The car park situation is crazy, we drove around all the car parks for nearly an hour trying to find a spot. Nothing available, in the end parked over a mile away and that too is a bit of a stretch for an 83 year old! Our first visit to this hospital and we will NEVER return.

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Responses

Response from Royal Oldham Hospital 2 years ago
Royal Oldham Hospital

Submitted on 25/08/2021 at 14:33
Published on nhs.uk at 20:08

Dear Beverley Jones

Thank you for taking the time to post your comment and we were very sorry to hear about your father’s experience in the X-ray department reception. Your comment has been shared with the senior leadership team who pass on their unreserved apologies to both your father, yourself and family. They wish to provide assurance that the member of staff will be informed of this complaint, asked to reflect to the incident and write an article on how they could have handled the situation better, which will be submitted back to the senior team.

It was also noted that the Dentist’s request was poorly completed, there was no patient data to allow for positive identification of the patient. This will be communicated back to the Dental practice to help eliminate future recurrence.

Parking

We are very sorry to read of your problems trying to find a suitable parking space on the hospital site, but what was already a very busy site is seeing higher demand than usual for parking and our ability to provide additional parking is currently being limited by additional work and activity at the hospital. To provide some additional patient and visitor parking capacity, spaces provided by Oldham Event Centre, off Sheepfoot Lane re-opened from Monday 9th August 2021. We are also in the process of changing some extra parking on Royal Parade to be used by patients and visitors and also moving some staff parking away from the site to allow more for patients and visitors.

Whilst we continually review and invest in parking provision if possible, we are not able to provide an unlimited number of parking spaces due to land, planning, environmental and funding constraints. In order to counteract the sometimes-high demand for parking, plus as part of encouraging physical activity and tackling climate change; we also try to encourage and assist our staff in particular, plus patients and visitors only where applicable, to make greater use of alternative travel choices to our hospital sites. Further information regarding directions and travel choices are available on our website at The Northern Care Alliance website.

Should you wish to discuss any of the issues further, please contact our PALS team via email to pals@pat.nhs.uk between the hours of 08:30 and 16:30, Monday to Friday.

Kind regards

The Patient Experience Team.

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