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Travelled to further hospital for treatment

Posted By AliB24

"Travelled to further hospital for treatment"

About: East Surrey Hospital / Accident and emergency Pembury Hospital / Trauma and orthopaedics

(as the patient),

East Surrey Hospital has never been my hospital of choice and my latest visit in early November has proved to me that nothing has changed or improved. I have always found the reception and triage staff to be indifferent and somewhat rude, though this is probably due to the stress that they appear to be under.

This time there was a waiting time of 6 hours at A&E so I decided to relieve the pressure at East Surrey by paying for an xray of my suspected fractured foot at Gatwick Park Hospital. The reason for this was that if my foot was just a tissue injury I would treat it myself. The xray confirmed a displaced fracture of my fourth metatarsal so I returned to East Surrey, with an urgent referral from my GP, for treatment.

The staff were rude and unsympathetic and told me that I couldn't be seen for a week and I was told that I couldn't have any painkillers as I needed to be seen by a doctor first. This is understandable but why would I have to wait a week. I then went to Pembury Hospital, Kent and was seen and treated within 2 hours by cheerful, polite and competent staff. The distance from my home to East Surrey Hospital is 3 miles, the distance from home to Pembury Hospital, Kent is 31 miles!

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Responses

Response from Tasha Gardner, Communications Manager, Marketing and Communications, Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust 9 years ago
Tasha Gardner
Communications Manager, Marketing and Communications,
Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust

supports all internal and external communications

Submitted on 20/11/2014 at 16:37
Published on Care Opinion at 19:31

Dear AliB24

I was sorry to read your comments and want to look into this and find out what happened. If you would like to call or e mail me and give me some more details I will speak to the clinical staff involved in your care and the reception staff who were on duty when you were here.

kind regards

Tasha

01737 768 511 ext 6838

tasha.gardner@sash.nhs.uk

  • {{helpful}} {{helpful == 1 ? "person thinks" : "people think"}} this response is helpful

Update posted by AliB24 (the patient)

In terms of wanting the details of when I attended and who was on duty, it shouldn’t be about individual cases and individual blame. The problem is more widespread.

Even when I attended East Surrey A&E a couple of years ago, on the advice of my doctor’s surgery, I was treated with contempt by the triage nurse who said that I shouldn’t have come to A&E. The triage nurse made me feel that I was wasting everyone’s time, so I left, even though I felt really ill, was unsteady on my feet and felt that I shouldn’t be driving. (I was suffering from an hugely irregular heartbeat which lasted for about ten hours, felt nauseas and faint and had tingling down my left arm. I later had a cardiac ablation, fortunately at another hospital, thank goodness.)

Funnily enough even in June 2012 when I went to Epsom Hospital A&E at three in the morning with a hugely irregular heartbeat and they took it very seriously and kept me in for four days.

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