"4 month old daughter a&e visit !"

Thanks you for telling us of your recent poor experience in Tameside Emergency Department. I can only offer you some of the reasons why things on the day you visited were so slow, but I do appreciate that this will do little to make amendments for the very long wait you experienced and the inconvenience this caused. For the entire month of July we have seen unprecedented numbers of patients every single day. July is the busiest month for all emergency departments across the country, but even so, it has been statistically proven that Tameside has seen a good deal more patients than most other departments. I am surprised you were told there were only two doctors in the department – this I am afraid must have been untrue, the bare minimum number of doctors on duty is five – and that is only in the early hours of the morning. I wonder if the person saying this meant there were only two doctors on duty in the ‘minors’ area. This would be nearer the reality of the situation, and I can certainly see this happening, because, when very ill or badly injured patients arrive, we deploy medical staff to see those patients immediately and as a priority, but of course this does make the waiting time for people with less urgent conditions lengthen, and I think this must have been happening when you visited with your daughter. This is borne out by your observation that there were patients having to be queued in the corridor – when this happens, it means we have simply run out of trollies and bays to place people because the department does not have sufficient space to place everyone that arrives at certain times – this is especially so when we experience a sudden rush of ambulance patients arriving simultaneously. Having said all this, you and your daughter deserved a much better service than you received and whilst we genuinely do try our best to see patients as quickly and efficiently as possible, we failed on this occasion. I am very sorry that we let you and your daughter down John Goodenough Director of Nursing ‘’Would you like to help the hospital to improve its services further? We are currently looking for patients and carers to become involved in a development called “Patient Stories”. We want to know more about our services from the point of view of those who received them – what was good, bad, what could be improved, what should be changed. Want to know more about what’s involved? Please contact John Goodenough, Director of Nursing at john.goodenough@tgh.nhs.uk