"Early closing on Friday before August Bank Holiday"

My name is Janet Wallis and I am the Matron for the phlebotomy department at the Princess Royal University Hospital (PRUH).

I have been asked to respond to your feedback on the NHS Choices website at the end of August, regarding your visit to the department on 25th August 2017 for a blood test. We aim to deliver a high quality service and I am genuinely disappointed when a patient or relative indicates that we may have failed to achieve this. Please allow me to start by offering my sincere apologies.

The Phlebotomy Service is a walk-in service and, as such, it is entirely unpredictable how many people will attend at any time.

The Phlebotomy Department at the Princess Royal University Hospital (PRUH) alone regularly sees between 350 and 500 patients a day, with the majority of these being sent from their GP.

As you know, we operate a numbering system on all three of our sites for blood tests.

When the volume of patients exceeds the ability of the department to complete all of the tests by the end of the session, the numbers are withdrawn.

The tickets are not usually withdrawn before the times stated on the website and patients who arrive after the tickets have been withdrawn may wait and if there is time to take their blood before the end of the session it will be done, although this cannot be guaranteed.

This was a particularly busy day, possibly because it was the Friday before a bank holiday weekend, and the tickets were withdrawn a little earlier than the stated times due to the numbers of people waiting.

We do not encourage our phlebotomists to rush through their workload as this would increase the risk of errors, but rather to work at a safe pace in this very busy service.

Each phlebotomy patient will take varying amounts of time for their test due to individual need. The variation in attendees and the significant variance in amount of time it takes to take blood from individual patients mean that an appointment system is not a practical one to use.

Again, please accept my sincere apologies that, on this occasion, we fell short of your expectations and I hope in future you will not have to wait so long to have a blood test.

Our Trust welcomes the opportunity to respond to feedback from our services users and I do hope my letter addresses your concerns.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the Patient Complaints Department, at the above address, via e-mail to kch-tr.patientcomplaints@nhs.net, or directly on 020 3299 1760/4515.