Care Opinion

A&E Service - Cramlington Hospital

Story from nhs.uk

"A&E Service - Cramlington Hospital"

About: Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital

On 24th October, I has advised to go to the Cramlington A&E by my GP, as my bladder was not functioning. I arrived at 6pm in extreme pain and there was a 2 hour wait time, but I was advised that I would be assessed before this. After 45mins a nurse called my name and we discussed what was wrong. The nurse took bloods and blood pressure, by this time the pain was worse, I could hardly walk. they put me in an assessment room and said they needed to do a bladder scan, it took 2 hours! to find a scanner, by this time the pain was unbearable. Around 9.30pm - 10.00PM, they eventually found a scanner and proceeded to treat me. For a hospital of this size, I would of thought they would have access to more than one scanner. On the basis of this experience I will never return, unless it is a serious life threatening issue.

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Responses

Response from Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital 7 years ago
Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital

Submitted on 11/11/2016 at 14:59
Published on nhs.uk on 12/11/2016 at 01:30

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for your review of The Northumbria Emergency Department, I was very sorry to read of your experience and I would like to offer an apology for the delay in sourcing the equipment needed to provide a bladder scan, causing you to sit in pain - this is not the standard of care that we want or expect in our hospital.

The Northumbria ED does have access to more than one bladder scanner but unfortunately at that time 3 of them were broken and therefore out of use and awaiting fixing, and so the bladder scanner had to be located from a different area on that evening. We are aware of the shortfall and in addition to the scanners being fixed there have been additional ones ordered to hopefully prevent this from happening again. I realise that this did not help at the time of your visit and I am so sorry that this meant you were left in pain.

I am also sorry that you feel you would not return to this hospital due your experience, but I do hope that the reassurance of more equipment may give you more confidence to attend again should you need to.

I do hope that you received the treatment that you needed and are feeling a lot better.

Kind regards,

Jessica

Jessica Mallach – Head of Quality Improvement and Patient Experience

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