"Children's A&E"

We are very sorry to read about your experience within the Accident and Emergency Department. It may be helpful to explain that all patients are initially triaged by a very senior nurse in the urgent care centre ( our partner organisation provides this service – Greenbrook Healthcare) prior to transfer to the waiting room in paediatrics and therefore those requiring very urgent assistance receive this at that stage. All children are then asked to attend the waiting area in the paediatric emergency department this includes children awaiting review by a GP from the urgent care centre, an emergency department doctor, a paediatrician and specialist doctors such as orthopaedic as was the case for your daughter. All emergency department children, paediatric referred children will then be reassessed by the emergency department nurse for reasons of confidentiality this will be in a secluded triage room and not in a waiting area. There is always a minimum of two nurses on duty in the paediatric area and at times where excessively busy this will be increased to meet the demand. It may have been that these nurses were engaged with children in the cubicle area and not visible to you. For reasons of infection control we do not have the facility to provide ice packs but it is unacceptable that there was no pillow available to provide support for your daughter’s knee. If you would like to talk through your experience in order that we can look into the issues in more depth please ring Noreen Rice – Emergency Care services Manager on 01895 279959. In the interim may we thank you for taking the time to provide us with feedback from your visit to the Accident & Emergency Department.