"There are some isolated examples ..."

What I liked

There are some isolated examples of well run departments and good practices by staff and nurses cheerful and reassuring

What could be improved

My comments are based around accompanying a patient visiting out-patient. The patient suffered pain and was referred for investigation.

This involved a consultation followed by three successive different out-patients

investigative procedures with at the end another consultation, (oddly

enough with a different consultant). Each of the procedures took up to an hour.

Within each procedure there was considerable waiting,

- first for a letter for a date,

- then the wait for the procedure itself

- then the wait for the outcome - in one case a wait of five weeks for a one

sentence letter saying nothing found and please wait for another letter with date of next procedure.

The lapsed time for the whole process was 7 months for approximately 4 hours of hospital time.

It is difficult to see why it could not have been achieved in a month.

The whole thing was extremely stressful, probably of more ill effect than the pain itself.

Some of the nursing and medical aspects around the procedures were poor as was communication with the patient