"I was given a picture of my baby ..."

What I liked

I was given a picture of my baby at the scan. Once I was finally seen staff were professional and efficient.

What could be improved

I had an apppointment at the EPAU for 10:15. I arrived promptly. As this unit is entirely about giving an ultrasound scan the fact that I did not get started with my scan until 12:00 is unacceptable. I believe this unit is getting around performance indicators for seeing patients within 15 min of their appointments by calling you in for a pointless 2 minutes while a nurse checks off a form of your details. Then you are made to wait in a small cramped waiting room which didn't even have enough seats for all the patients there. Instead of patents having an alloted 30 minutes of appointment to be checked in and scanned everyone was made to do this is stages so that on paper they could say they are seeing more people when in the reality all appointments have at least an hour of waiting around time. Its similar to an airline overbooking its flights. The appointment times need to be per person booking so a 10:15 appointment should be your scan time having to wait 2 hours is not acceptable either enlarge this unit so that patients can be seen in a timely manner (i.e. actually meeting the target to be seen-and scanned in 15 minutes of your appointment time or reduce the number of available appointments/day so that the staff can actually give each patient their allocated time at their appointment time.

Anything else?

The EPAU, early pregnancy assesment unit is not shown on the BRI map available online. It is mentioned under women's and children's services- gynacology. However it is not located anywhere near these services. It is listed as in Ward 12- which is also not shown on the BRI map. Update the website to ward 9, main hospital clearly in text and list the EPAU on the BRI map. Also when my GP scheduled my appointment she even rang back just to ask where this was located and told Ward 12- its not there its in Ward 9. Please update your staff. When I went in to the ante-natal unit the receptionist had no idea where this unit was or what it was. It was only when I went down to ultrasound that they could point me to the right location. All in all my experience of BRI is one of terrible communication and managment.