"Broken arm and good care received twice"

My son fell and injured his arm.

Being new to the area I went online and discovered that Stirling minor injuries unit could deal with suspected fractures and were open until 9pm. We arrived at 7: 30pm to be told that there was not enough time left to treat my son that evening.

Learning point 1: Please state clearly on your website when your last consultation is likely to be. I know that every day is different but you must have some idea that patients turning up at 7: 30pm on a Friday evening have little chance of being seen.

We drove onto Forth Valley. There was a clear sign at reception saying waiting time 1 hour. We were treated and on our way home within 90mins - very good in my opinion.

Our initial triage was performed by an obviously experienced nurse who talked directly to my son and quickly isolated the problem to his wrist. The nurse organised an Xray and sent us onwards.

Xray was straightforward and with clear instructions we headed off to a new waiting area in minor injuries.

After 30mins we were taken into a consultation room and shortly after that were greeted by our doctor.

I have worked in the NHS and therefore know that our FY2 doctor was likely to be on their 4th rotation, with the first 3 rotations in FY1 likely to be in general medicine, surgery and another discipline (e. g. GP, Paeds or OBs & Gyn). Therefore it was likely that our doctor had been working in A&E for nor more than 6 weeks.

The doctor repeated the medical history taken by the nurse and then asked if Xrays had been taken. Our doctor was perfectly pleasant, however given the pressure on services within the NHS I couldn't help but notice that we received the same service twice, and the initial excellent consultation by the nurse was in some being undermined by the less than complete consultation of the junior doctor.

I full understand that junior doctors need to get experience of working in A&E, however this experience suggested that our doctor's time was not best spent redoing the initial consultation.

Overall service was very good and this is not a complaint. However, having working in Health Improvement it would be remiss of me not to highlight this clear duplication of service.