"Really sad signs of decay and poor management"

What I liked

Clinical staff were competent, pleasant and thoughtful despite being - by my assessment - overworked

What could be improved

The clinic that I attended was overbooked, so that late running was inevitable. The clinic routinely runs until 6 - 630pm, when it should be finished by 5.30pm. I was told by staff that ' we have given up complaining about it - there is nothing that we can do.'

The waiting area is grim; signposting (especially important for the deaf) is poor, and in at least one case, frankly misleading; queuing systems - each > 10 people long when I arrived - are inappropriate - and hard for the less able or elderly to cope with, I'd have thought - and the late running of the clinic means that, by the time the last patients emerge from the clinic itself, all reception/support staff have left. Note-tracing systems are inadequate; as are arrangements to ensure that follow up appointments actually happen as intended, and without any input from the patient to chivvy the system along.

I was hugely disappointed to see the NHS caring for patients so badly - and in a hospital which, when I first visited it as a patient 10 years ago, was quite one of the most impressive I had ever been in. None of this should be a problem, and all of it, with a little thought and effort (which is what is needed, rather than money) is easily remediable.