"Rude staff & inefficient"

Hi.

I appreciate your feedback regarding your experience in the department.

The emergency department has several areas - waiting room, (11 spaces) Minors, (15 beds) Majors, (6 spaces) Children's area + CED waiting room, and (8 beds) Resus. We aim to triage ambulatory patients coming in to the department within 15minutes of arrival. The triage nurse will ensure that we categorise your presenting condition appropriately using Manchester Triage Category and determine at the time the urgency of treatment required. They will also provide or endorse to waiting room nurse any first aid treatment needed to be done for the patient to address concerns such as bleeding wound. Part of the triage nurse's responsibility is to assess your pain level and will aim to address it. However, their capacity to provide you pain relief in the triage room is limited to Paracetamol and Ibuprofen, anything other than that will need prescription from our doctors which can be done. We do encourage our patients to let us know if they needed further pain relief.

Waiting time in the department can be long. This depends on the number of patients waiting to be seen, the number of doctors and practitioners that are on shift to see these patients, and the acuity of the patient's condition that are presented in the department. I understand your frustration of having to wait in the waiting room for 5hours when you noted that there were only 4 people in the waiting room. However, at the time of your attendance, the clinicians might have been pulled to other areas to see patients needing immediate life saving treatment or there were other patients waiting to be seen in the other areas I have mentioned above.

We see an average of 250 patients a day and the department, so even our waiting room can be full. We may sometimes ask patients to limit the number of their company to ensure we give space for other patients attending the ED. As this is a public space, we expect our patients and their relatives and friends to act in proper decorum. This is the same how you would expect us, ED staff, to treat our patients equally and with respect.

It would really be helpful for us if you can let us know your details so we can have a look and investigate as to whether your triage was done appropriately so we can also feedback to our staff and use this as a learning point.

I will include in our safety brief a reminder for all staff to always treat and speak to our patients and their relatives with respect and good manner. Rudeness is something that we will not tolerate in the department especially amongst our staff members.

Again, thank you for your feedback and I hope that you are recovering well.

Kind regards,

Mitch

Clinical Nurse Manager

Emergency Department