"A&E Staff and Radiologists Credit to Hospital"

What I liked

The care I received from all the staff

Anything else?

This is my second review of Darent Valley this year. Having had a day care operation in June I thought that would be it. However, the evening of Saturday 29th September saw me back at the hospital - this time in A&E with a broken arm.

Unfortunately for me the site of the fracture, the top end of the Humerous at the shoulder, meant that treatment was not entirely straightforward and two attempts at putting on a plaster cast failed because they couldn't get the cast high enough to cover the fracture. In addition the weight of the cast at the second attempt would have put a strain on my neck muscles. I ended up with just a collar and cuff to isolate the arm against my body to support the natural healing process. There were also four trips to X-Ray to firstly check the original break and then the positioning of the casts/collar cuff.

During all of this the unfailing kindness and good humour of all the staff including the receptionists, triage nurse and short stay nurses helped to make what was a very painful situation and a long time (approx 6 hours in total) bearable. The enternox helped as well!!. I want to specifically mention : the two nurses in A&E who mainly dealt with me and the two radiologists on duty that night who did everything they could to try and make the process as comfortable as possible. They say laughter is the best medicine I may not have been laughing a lot but there were opportunities to have a joke about the number of times I had been to x-ray and the plaster room, which I found helped make the situation, for me anyway, easier.

The Orpaedic doctor was professional and involved me and my husband in decisions about what was happening e.g showing us the various x-rays of the fracture and explaining why the casts had not worked. He prescribed some codeine as pain relief and surprisingly , given they are easily obtainable, they also gave me paracetamol and Ibuprofen.