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Overlooked at ultrasound appointment

Posted By juneec33

"Overlooked at ultrasound appointment"

About: Belfast City Hospital / Radiology

(as a service user),

I had an appointment today for a Ultrasound and I arrived 10 minutes prior to this. The staff confirmed my appointment and I was told to take a seat and wait to be attended to.

I waited a further 1 hour while noticing other patients who came well after me being attended to. I was on a fast and had drank a litre of water as earlier told to. I was dying to go to the bathroom and had to approach the staff member at reception.

I asked why I have not been called or attended to for over an hour and everyone who came after me was attended to. That was when they got up and had a nurse attend to me. The nurse who attended to me apologised and told me the member of staff did not register me in on arrival, that was why the nurse did not know I was waiting for over an hour at the reception.  The nurse also said they will have it reported and if I wanted to make a complaint they will direct me to the complaints department.

I feel I was treated unfairly and overlooked, in my opinion, because of my race, and that is unacceptable for staff of a city hospital to treat anyone that way.

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Responses

Response from Sean O'Conaire, Service Manager, Imaging, Belfast HSC Trust 2 years ago
We have made a change
Sean O'Conaire
Service Manager, Imaging,
Belfast HSC Trust

Submitted on 04/11/2021 at 21:39
Published on Care Opinion on 05/11/2021 at 09:42

Dear service user

Firstly I want to convey my deepest and unreserved apology to you for your extremely poor experience at the Ultrasound department. This falls well below the standard that I would expect and I was saddened to hear your story. I am very grateful that you have taken the time to share this through Care Opinion and I wish to assure you that I will use your experience to improve our services. I would also like to apologise for the delay in responding.

Colleagues in the Ultrasound department have investigated this incident and shared your complaint with the staff in question. All staff involved also wish to pass on to you their sincere apologies. Reception has been reminded that part of this role is to monitor the waiting room to ensure no patient is overlooked. Whilst many patients must wait for some time until their bladder has filled, no patient should ever be left waiting for so long and in discomfort.

I will share your experience, anonymised of course, with all imaging departments to ensure that our procedures are reviewed and that all staff are aware of their responsibilities. Furthermore this has identified a need for customer care training, which I will ensure is completed.

The Trust is committed to ensuring that staff, patients, service users and carers have equality of access to services and feel welcome, comfortable and safe accessing all Trust facilities, irrespective of race, religion or political opinion. This is in accordance with our Good Relations Strategy: Healthy Relations for a Healthy Future 2. The promotion of Good Relations is an integral part of our commitment to improve the health and wellbeing of all our service users. We also work to ensure that discrimination does not happen in how we deliver services, treat another person whether that person is a visitor, carer, patient or service user and in our workplace. We have mandatory equality training for staff which includes looking at everyone’s responsibility to promote good relations and raising awareness about discrimination.

Once again, please accept my sincere apology for your poor experience.

Kind regards

Sean O Conaire, Imaging Services Manager Belfast HSC Trust

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