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Emergency care in Raigmore

Posted By hunter37

"Emergency care in Raigmore"

About: Raigmore Hospital / Accident & Emergency Raigmore Hospital / Cardiology Scottish Ambulance Service

(as the patient),

999 call to home Sunday 1200 as I had 2 hours of bad chest pain 4 weeks ago. Fantastic response from paramedics who struggled to get an ECG off my hairy chest.

Wonderful prompt attention in A&E Raigmore. Saw consultant in A&E and had some tests.

Kept waiting on a trolley for 5 hours in A&E as hospital had no beds as managers shut beds to reduce nurses to save money. Meanwhile wonderful B&B facilities in GP hospitals up and down the region but no diagnsotics and no acute care? Priorities?

Got to 6A eventually whereby the consultant physician did all the work while numeous junior doctors seemed less than involved. Heard same old history from my poor neighbour 4 times thru the curtains as he was brought in by the police. Privacy? Dignity?

Why is emergency medical unit so far away from the emergency department? Why is Raigmore the shabbiest hospital in Scotland?

Clinical care great. Backdrop poor.

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Responses

Response from Maimie Thompson, Head of Public Relations and Engagement, Chief Executive's Office, NHS Highland 11 years ago
Maimie Thompson
Head of Public Relations and Engagement, Chief Executive's Office,
NHS Highland

Submitted on 17/04/2013 at 08:43
Published on Care Opinion at 10:53

picture of Maimie Thompson

Dear Hunter37

Thank you very much for your posting which I have shared with colleagues. Its reassuring to know that your clinical care was "great".

We had a look at the waiting times in A&E on Sunday to see why you waited so long…but it doesn't look like we had someone waiting over 5 hours on Sunday. So a little more info might help me to get to the bottom of this. But regardless none of us would want to wait long and I am really sorry you experienced delays. One of the really important things we know about waiting times is whether you were kept informed about how long you had to wait or whether our communications with you was poor.

You raise an interesting point about the lay out of the hospital. This is something that has been debated many times over the years and not always been possible to get a consensus about what is the best plan - the docs and nurses etc have some understandably differing views. But having said that a lot of work has gone on over the last year and there will be opportunities to change the lay out. Did you feel the current lay out impacted on your care?

It sounds like you have a lot of knowledge of the NHS Highland configuration and so not sure if you have personal views around eg Community Hospitals, numbers of beds etc or whether you are simply raising questions. Either way I would be delighted to answer them on-line or through some other means of your choice. One of the greatest privileleges of working for NHS Highland is trying to understand how the whole system fits together and work with colleagues across our vast area.. I know every hospital in the Highland Council area, what diagnostics they have and the spectrum of acute care they provide and so I am sure we could have a useful discussion. Thanks again for sharing your view

You can contact me by phone 01463 704722 or email maimie.thompson@nhs.net

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