"Excellent Children’s Emergency Department..."

In today’s beleaguered and bleak working environment within the NHS, we are bombarded with stories of concern from the coalface. However, I wish to relay an extremely positive patient experience from our visit to the Children’s Emergency Department on the morning of Tuesday 16 October, 2018.

Our eldest son had woken with a worrying headache, and a spreading purpural rash. This was on the back of a fortnight of irritability, cervical lymphadenopathy, bruising, abdominal pain and difficulty walking. What had started as symptoms easily dismissed as viral, had built into a suddenly very worrying clinic picture that needed immediate attention.

Arrival at the Trust led to clear and simple parking arrangements. We were greeted in ED by a triage nurse seamlessly signposting is to reception. The reception staff were efficient and cheerful and we went straight into CED where a Paediatric nurse immediately ushered us through, took an accurate history and immediately recognised the need for bloods. She wasted no time in applying Emla cream and we were invited to sit and wait in a clean, inviting and reassuring environment.

We were called through in an expected time frame where we saw a CED dr. Like all his colleagues, he introduced himself to my son with kindness and care and we felt in safe hands.

After a short while, he went that little bit extra to come and find us and inform us that our son’s full blood count had returned normal. We had been very anxious at the prospect of a potential blood malignancy and so this was especially kind and thoughtful.

Clinical staff kept checking on us throughout the morning and we were then called through to discuss results and an onward management plan.

Our 5 year old son wrote his feedback. He liked CED as it was “exciting, clean, interesting and very kind”.

We were discharged less than four hours from arrival with excellent clinical care and judgement.

We cannot fault the clinical care and administrative competence.

We would especially like to thank the clinical staff for being particularly empathetic during this clinical encounter. The professional courtesy was received with immense gratitude.

The hard working staff are a credit to the Trust.