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Long wait at Dumfries and Galloway RI A&E

Posted By open997

"Long wait at Dumfries and Galloway RI A&E"

About: Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary / Accident & Emergency

(as the patient),

Once I left the front desk and was taken for a pre-examination of problem I waited for what seemed like an eternity to be seen. In my experience, it doesn't matter what time of day you go, you're always told there is an "emergency" and it "shouldn't" be too long. Why can't you just get seen to when taken through?

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Responses

Response from Head of Patient Services, NHS Dumfries and Galloway 11 years ago
NHS Dumfries and Galloway

Submitted on 10/05/2012 at 14:50
Published on Care Opinion at 15:03

Thank you for sharing your experience with us and I am sorry to read that it was not as we would hope for our patients in Accident and Emergency. I would like, if I may, to offer some information about how we aim to tackle the difficulty of long waiting times, noting that the emergency department in DGRI is a relatively small department with limited resources. This means that on occasions, when patients with complex or emergency problems are being treated, others with less complex or urgent problems are asked to wait for treatment. We have tried to deal with situations like this by introducing a system of streaming. This system is based on a senior nurse working efficiently with the help of a nurse or care assistant and aims to deal with simple problems quickly. This can be very effective in dealing with long waits. Unfortunately, owing to limited resources, we cannot operate this system all the time.

In summary we have to prioritise the most serious cases and the system described above is there to reduce the wait for the less urgent cases.

We are committed to delivering a good experience for patients, whatever their problem and once again, I am sorry this was not the case for you on this occasion.

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