"Something needs to change to hasten wait times"

Hi, I want to give as fair an opinion as possible. For some background info, I’ve been a double above knee amputee for almost 5 years, using prosthetics for the last three. It took me a couple years to get started due to pain/skin issues. 

When I started at WestMARC at the QEUH, it was the place to be to get all your prosthetic needs sorted and they were brilliant help. The staff have always been amazing, very keen to push you to keep going and help in any way they can.

Unfortunately, in the last couple of years, it seems to be a shadow of its former self (not in terms of patient care from staff, but specifically making prosthetics). As a patient, I don’t know where these problems lie, but it could be something to look into.

I have been having many issues with my prosthetics over the last couple of years causing my skin to break down and being very painful to use. I need to be able to use my prosthetics to get out, work and socialise. My mental health suffers for not being able to get out and living my life.

My prosthetist is amazing, but I imagine the technology is behind what’s offered elsewhere in that it’s hard to get a decent mould of my leg. On top of this, recently due to the amount of time I have had to stay off my legs due to pain/skin breakdown from the prosthetics, it is often changing shape. With the amount of time it takes these days (being sometimes as long as 4 months in contrast to 1-2 months previously), from when you are originally cast to when you get your finished prosthetic, my leg is a different shape so we need to start again. This system doesn’t work for patients such as myself that have temperamental size changes due to not being able to consistently wear my prosthetic.

To sum this up, I feel something needs to change to hasten wait times and if it was possible, provide better resources/technology for consistent socket casting.

Thanks for reading