An afternoon in ED

I did something yesterday that I haven’t done for nearly 25 years – I spent time as an ED receptionist. 

The last time I worked in an A&E department reception I had to write every patient’s details in a very large register – not quite in copperplate but not far off.   

I do remember it was Christmas day and there wasn’t a very steady stream of patients and a number of them seemed apologetic that they were taking up our time on what should have been a day of celebration and spending time with family.

Moving on 25 years things have certainly changed.   I was only there for three hours but in that time I feel I saw a good cross-section of the pressures the NHS faces today.    

I was lucky to spend time with a great range of colleagues who every day have to face the kind of issues that would surprise a lot of people.  At all times they all kept good humour and conducted themselves in way that was a credit to themselves, the Trust and the NHS.  

In three hours I saw patients and their relatives who were frightened, concerned, cross, frustrated and almost every other emotion.    Clearly expectations weren’t always met but in all cases we tried very hard to do the best for everyone and I came away immensely proud to work in such a great hospital.

But…. For all that we are doing very well there are still many things that we can do much better and a lot of these involved the non-clinical experience that our patients had.

In just that one three hour session I understood far better the real impact of everyday issues such as the queue for the car-park – a patient not being seen properly by the assessment team as their relative (who was needed to speak on their behalf) sat in the queue for twenty minutes.    Patients sitting in the waiting room with no real sense of how busy the department was so getting frustrated as little appears to be happening – whereas in fact there were 48 patients being treated when I left.   Walking patients having to wait whilst ambulance crews book their patients in and the perception that they are being ignored. 

All of these things and more can be sorted if we have the mind to do so which I know we do at SaSH.  I said I’d go back and sit with them again.  I’ll go back with a different perspective and perhaps next time I’ll be more helpful to them – I did promise some post-it notes.  I will also try very hard to do this in other departments and I already have had an invitation from chemotherapy which I will happily take up as I’ve seen how much I can learn just from this one small thing.