"A&E visit on a Sunday morning."

The first time I had to visit A&E at Derby Royal was a number of years ago after a disagreement with a bread knife while cooking and it was not great. The place was rammed with vomiting, incoherent and haemorrhaging drunks quite early on Sunday morning, they'd clearly been there a while and I was stuck there amongst them holding the tip of my finger in place for most of the morning and well into the afternoon. When I was seen I had some stitches put in and was told that it very well might just drop off. I wasn't best pleased as a musician you kind of need a fingertip. I felt that if I was seen sooner and if some options were given I might not have been left so stumpy. So this Sunday when I broke a glass washing up and gashed my hand I spent about an hour waiting for things to stop spinning and the bleeding to stop while wishing so very hard that it didn't need stitching when I kind of knew it clearly did. After checking that A&E was the only place to present for stitches I drove over and stupidly parked miles away and had to walk miles to try and find it. Either I was lucky or don't always believe politically motivated stories about hospitals in crisis because the service I received was absolutely excellent. No exaggeration I was checked in, saw a nurse, given tablets for the pain, had my wound cleaned, x-rayed for any foreign objects, stitched up and given a tetanus booster almost within an hour. Really happy. Thank you so much NHS and Royal Derby. My only criticism would be of the reception staff who while sat quite far apart worked as a pair, discussing and debating on the best place to send each patient presenting at the desk. They did this quite loudly and I could hear the details and it didn't seem very professional or discrete. Once they'd made a joint decision the one on the left asked you to join a second queue to talk to the one on the right, the same receptionist who'd been debating and discussing your injury as part of a three way conversation just a moment ago. It really didn't seem like an effective way to work with a queue? Surely you'd just have two staff split the queue into two queues and each person would perform the same role? Anyway, this is a minor detail and might be part of the triage/staggering process. Again, my thanks to the NHS and to the team at Royal Derby Hospital.