"A&E Administration"

I attended A&E at Warrington recently. The clinical care was OK, but the management of the hospital need to urgently review the administration, which had some glaring inefficiencies. Firstly, the receptionists are blocked in by glass panels. There is no means of conducting a reasonable conversation without shouting and the musak being broadcast doesn’t help. So I could hear a gentleman giving his DOB and next-of-kin from four places back in the queue. When it was my turn, after two tries at giving my next-of-kin details, I subsequently found the receptionist had wrongly entered their surname, street and mobile number! No doubt the glass is to protect staff. But banks and building societies manage to balance security with a positive customer experience. Secondly, rather than collect patients, nurses shout their names from several yards away. In a busy area, and with the musak again, it’s impossible to hear properly. Aside from the obvious disrespect, this slows down the queue by a minute or two each time. Thirdly, why does the hospital need so much personal information? I don’t mind the stuff that’s relevant to clinical care, but I do mind about the rest. Again, it matters. It was obvious that the bottleneck in A&E is getting to see the nurse (that took well over 90 minutes, the other steps only took a few minutes each). Yet when I was with the nurse she asked for data about my drinking habits “as part of a Government survey”. That was completely irrelevant to my injury and merely slowed down the queue. Surely if this is really necessary (and it isn’t) a trainee could collect the data whilst patients are waiting in reception? Finally, please don’t respond by batting the matter back to me with a request to contact PALS. It’s a good thing that you collect customer feedback. Those of us who take the time and trouble to respond do so in the hope that our comments will be acted on and make things better for others. Cutting and pasting a standard email response merely demonstrates a lack of respect.