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"Overloaded A&E cripling the staffs ability to..."

About: Yeovil District Hospital

Unfortunately my 2 year old girl had to endure an extremely poor service at the Yeovil A&E department recently which appears to be driven by an overload situation, only so many nurses and one doctor available to help. We took our daughter to A&E as she managed to break the cartlidge and bone section in her lower mouth causes her front lower teeth to stick outwards by 90 Degs. This created a huge amount of blood and pain for my daughter and we were hoping that she could be given some help quickly. Instead we was left in a room full of other people who was also suffering bad injuries for 1 hour and 45 mins before being seen by a nurse to gauge the injury. We was then left for a further 2 hours before seeing the Sr Doctor who advised us that they were unable to help. I am completely bewildered why we could not of been told that earlier so we could travel to another hospital that could help. We was advised that we would need a facial reconstruction hospital to provide the correct support and that we should visit their A&E department. Whilst I am not critising the nurses or the doctor who were clearly completely overloaded, the lack of extra nurses and doctors to reduce the burden was not apparent which was leaving many people in complete agony for long periods of time .. some being told (as we were after nearly 4 hours) that they cannot help us and we need to go elsewhere. Whilst trying to track down help amid the overloaded situation I saw one poor man on a bed in the hallway left crying in significant pain for over 20mins whilst the nurses and doctor did the best they could. It was rather like seeing a hospital in a war zone on TV .. a terrible sight. One poor boy had vomitted over the floor when we arrived and when we left 4 hours later after being told they could not help us the vomit was still left in a pile with everyone trying to avoid it. In contrast the hopsital in Exeter who was eventually able to help us was amzingly supportive and advised that Yeovil A&E are often in this situation. Essentially this e-mail is not to try and create a complaint but to try and constructively help those poor overloaded nurses and doctor so that they can help patients in the future and avoid people having to endure what we and otehr experienced in this terrible night. Please NHS .. listen to these complaints and advise how this can be fixed going forward. We pay a significant amount of national assurance contributions for this service, how will it be improved ? Thanks John

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Responses

Response from Yeovil District Hospital 9 years ago
Yeovil District Hospital
Submitted on 25/09/2014 at 09:58
Published on nhs.uk on 26/09/2014 at 04:00


Dear John We are so sorry to read your description of your visit to our ED Department and whilst the department can be busy this is not the standard of care that we accept. I would very much like to talk with you so that we can learn from your feedback and make the necessary improvements. If you would be so kind as to telephone me on 07979366805 or email me your telephone number to linda.hann@ydh.nhs.uk I would be very keen to discuss your experience further. Kind regards Linda Hann Patient Experience Manager

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