"Hospital Policy"

Very disappointed to be initially refused treatment after declining to wear a face covering at the Heywood walk in centre today.

NHS frontline staff are under unfair pressure having to enforce this Trust policy which has no scientific basis or medical grounds for implementation. Ill fitting paper masks have been shown, in many RCT's, to have virtually no impact on the spread of SARS-COV-2.

After being sent back to the waiting room, I was eventually triaged by a different member of staff who advised that they did not have the facilities to attend to my ailment and sent me back to the A&E dept at UHNM. Funny, but staff at A&E had just redirected me to the Heywood in the first place. Needless to say, I didn't bother going back to A&E.

Come on senior management, scrap this mask mandate. Hardly anyone is wearing them outside an NHS setting. You have just made a very anxious patient with a potentially life changing serious health concern very worried about getting treatment elsewhere in the NHS.