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ED wait time

Posted By tigerfg74

"ED wait time"

About: Broome Health Campus / Emergency Department

(as the patient),

I had injured my rib recently and suffering a lot of pain. As there were no GP appts available in Broome, after a day or so I took myself to Broome ED. I arrived in the mid-afternoon and by later in the evening I was still waiting to be seen.

I left due to feeling uncomfortable sitting in the waiting room chairs, tired and hungry. This has been the first time I have ever had to wait for over 2 hours in Broome ED. The nurses were lovely and helpful though, offering me medication for pain relief. In my opinion, five and half hour wait does not seem right.

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Responses

Response from James Sherriff, Operations Manager, Broome Hospital, WACHS Kimberley 3 years ago
James Sherriff
Operations Manager, Broome Hospital,
WACHS Kimberley

Submitted on 29/09/2021 at 4:02 PM
Published on Care Opinion Australia at 4:34 PM

Dear tigerfg74,

Extremely sorry to hear about your incident and we thank you for taking the time to write to us.

At times we do see an unforeseen surge to patient needs and then ensure that all are appropriately triaged so we make sure the patients with life threatening concerns are seen urgently, there are also occasions when in the Emergency department where there are multiple patients requiring complex and specialised intervention by our specialist ED team.

Unfortunately this may then have the impact which you witnessed on the day of a delay as our team work on these critical patients. As you also experienced, our lovely ED staff continue to monitor and assist the patients waiting, and this we are extremely proud of the personalised care they offer to each and every patient. We will pass this onto our staff, thank you for this feedback.

We wish we could make the wait more comfortable, it is really difficult other than offer treatment, such as the pain relief, and personal follow up for any person who is unwell in the waiting area. Rib injuries are one of the most painful and difficult to find the best position at times to relieve this. We hope you have recovered from the injury and you can be assured that our teams continue to re-evaluate the situations at the time to ensure we each and every patient is reassessed until we can get them into the emergency department.

We greatly appreciate your time to sent us your experience.

Yours Sincerely,

James

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