"lack of Opthalmic services in A&E"

I recently visited my local Hospital A&E.  I wear special contact lenses, from a specialist contact lens clinc which can be sometimes difficult to remove and I had bruised my right eye the night before when removing one.

When this happened on a previous occasion I was told by NHS24 to go straight to A&E and that occasion I required a trip to the specialist eye hospital and antibiotics, which I was given on the spot.

 Now I am aware there is no Ophthalmic consultant on staff in my local hospital and ordinarily I would have phoned the contact lens clinic and arranged an emergency appointment there to make sure I did not need antibiotics again. However it was a Tuesday and I know the Ophthalmology outpatient clinic runs on a Tuesday so there would actually be a suitably trained person in the building to help.

Accordingly, I went to A&E. Now on this occasion I have to compliment the staff who did the obvious thing and squeezed me in with the consultant who assessed that I needed some steroid drops. However, he could not give them at the time but gave me a letter for my GP, who would then write a prescription. I was also told I would actually have to see the GP not just hand it in. 

Coincidentally I had a booked appointment with my GP for an unrelated matter later that day. This was fortunate as I normally have to wait a week to 10 days to get a GP appointment, so if I had not had that already organised I would still be waiting for the drops.  This raises the 1st of my concerns- lack of joined up thinking here- is there not a hospital pharmacy?

Secondly as I was being discharged from A&E is was told I should not have gone to A&E, even though I knew there was an ophthalmologist there and wouldn’t have gone if there wasn’t, but to my optician. I was also told that the A&E staff are not supposed to refer people directly along the corridor like that.

My eye condition is such that it can not be corrected with glasses and as such I rely on the specialisl eye hospital for my ophthalmic care and don’t really have an optician locally. The last time I visited one was approx. 18 months ago and unless they have markedly improved in that time,  they are well meaning but they don’t have the equipment, or didn’t last time I visited. I am willing to admit I am in the wrong on this next point, but I also don’t think Specsavers would be allowed to prescribe antibiotics, if I had needed them or the steroids I was prescribed in this case, so would have had to refer me elsewhere anyway. All that also assumes that I would be able to get an appointment on the day

I do understand that it is important to not take away from the smooth running of the outpatients clinics but I find it hard to believe that the situation of someone with an ophthalmic A&E issue occurring on the same day as an ophthalmic outpatient clinic happens often enough to make a dent on the statistics of the clinic operation. Surely a small degree of flexibility is possible as a courtesy to patients to save them a 6hr+ round trip and £30 train fare for a 5 min check?