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"Who was wasting whose time?"

About: Eastbourne District General Hospital / Accident and emergency

(as a relative),

Yesterday my daughter visited her GP with a stomach ache. The GP examined her and said it looked like appendicitis and that she should take the day off work and go straight to A&E at Eastbourne, which she did.

She was there for many hours, being told that she should not leave until she was seen by a surgeon. For the first hour, until her phone battery ran out, she was sending texts saying how ridiculous it was that she was in A&E for what she thought was almost certainly a minor infection.

Finally the surgeon arrived and told my daughter that she was wasting NHS resources, in what she thought was an extremely arrogant manner. Perhaps she was, but she was doing so on the instructions of the NHS, and for about 5:30 of the 7 hours the only resource she was wasting was a bed, whereas they were wasting her time completely, preventing her from getting on with her life and doing her job (she will not be paid for the shift she missed).

To top that all off by telling her off in an arrogant manner is just shocking.

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Responses

Response from Eastbourne District General Hospital 10 years ago
Eastbourne District General Hospital
Submitted on 26/06/2013 at 16:44
Published on nhs.uk on 06/01/2014 at 04:18


We're very sorry to hear about your daughters attendance to the A&E department at Eastbourne DGH. As a Trust we are committed to giving the highest quality of care to our patients. We're therefore concerned to read your comments. We would like the opportunity to look into your daughters experience more fully and to apologise in person for the fact that her experience was poor. We would appreciate it if she would be willing to contact the Patient Advice & Liaison Service (PALS) on 01323 435886. In the meantime we will ensure your comments are passed onto senior nursing staff. Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback. We apologise for the delay in posting a response.

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