"Complaint"

Dear asteropetb79,

Thank you so much for taking the time to provide us with your feedback on Care Opinion. I also understand you spoke to the senior Nurse at the Hospital on the night in question and that you have subsequently spoken to our Director of Emergency Medicine, Dan. I know Dan is planning to touch base with you again this week after he speaks directly to all the staff to confirm a couple of things but in the interim, Dan has reviewed the notes and reviewed the activity in the Department at the time of your second presentation.

I understand from Dan that your family arrived in our ED at 15:46 and were very keen on the child being seen by the same doctor who saw you the previous presentation. I understand that this was because you were very happy with that doctor, and didn’t want to repeat things again. I acknowledge that it would have been very frustrating for you that the same doctor was unable to see your child – unfortunately he was extremely busy with critical patients in the ED, and these patients required active 1:1 intervention. I note that you saw a different senior locum doctor at 17:20 but you told this doctor you wanted to wait for the other doctor. Our notes say that the doctor you were seeking went to see you at 20.30 but by this time you had left the Department.

I hope you will understand that our most senior doctor must always be with our most critical patients. I know this meant you had another doctor, but we must always put our most experienced resources with our most critical patients. And sadly we have had a lot of critical patients lately.

Dan is following up on the issues about your partner having to sit on a cold floor, with your sick babe being offered a wafer. Staff would not routinely ask our patients to sit on the floor - that would be very inappropriate, particularly with a babe, so we are very keen to understand what happened by talking to the staff and reviewing any CCTV footage.

I know Dan will contact us both to provide the outcome of his interrogation of that night and in the interim, I know the staff already know that offering the floor would be inappropriate. I hope that things are now improved for your family.

Kind Regards,

Jan

Dear asteropetb79,

I am very sorry that the Director didn't call back - he has been extremely busy in our ED in Code Yellow circumstances but of course that's not helpful to you. You should absolutely call the Commissioner if that's what will work best for you - we will wait till we receive contact from them to have any further discussion. Once again, my apologies for our delay in response.

Yours in Kindness, Jan