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complaint about item found in a&e

Story from nhs.uk

"complaint about item found in a&e"

About: West Cumberland Hospital

Hello, on visiting the a&e department at west cumberland yesterday approx 4.20, (14th feb 16) my daughter in law to be, husband and 2 yr old grandson were sitting waiting for news on my son who had been brought in after an accident.

The grandson got bored so we let him have a run about, as we were sitting near to the back and there wasn't many people in.

He was behind us by the disabled toilet and next to that door was a wooden board with 2 fire extinguishers attached to it, the grandson picked up something from the top of this wooden board and brought it to his mam.

We couldn't believe it, but it was a needle point still encased within a tube, i told mam to take it to the reception desk and show one of the staff exactly what he had just picked up, she did so .

We sat there for news on the son and the member of staff had plenty of time to come over and apologise or say at least something about it, but not a word !

I wanted to ask questions about the cleaning side of things and as to how it could come about that something like that could have been overlooked so easy for any child of any age to have been able to get contact with.

Could someone please respond.

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Responses

Response from West Cumberland Hospital 8 years ago
West Cumberland Hospital

Submitted on 26/02/2016 at 07:52
Published on nhs.uk on 27/02/2016 at 01:32

Dear Madam

Thank you for your contact via this website.

Finding a needle in such circumstances is clearly unacceptable and I thank you and your family for taking immediate action, to prevent any injury, by handing this to a staff member.

Without further investigation we would not be able to ascertain if this was a breach of our clinical waste policy, or whether this has been left on the top of the fire extinguishers by a member of the public.

Our hospital has a strict policy and procedure in place to ensure the safe collection, storage, transport and disposal of needles and all of our staff are aware of how important this is in protecting everyone from injury.

I understand your concern on ‘what happened next’ and I can only apologise that the member of the reception staff or the A&E manager did not keep you updated or inform you with regards to hospital procedure should an incident like this occur.

Your concerns will be passed to the department so that they can look into this incident further and check on the cleaning schedules in place that afternoon.

Many thanks you help at a time when you and your family would have been stressed and very anxious.

I do hope that your son made a speedy recovery from his accident.

Best regards

Alison

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