"Long wait for service"

Dear Triage

Thanks for sharing your experience of NHS 24 and the Out of Hours Service. I can clearly sense your frustration. I was so sorry to learn your daughter has been in pain and I hope she is doing better.

I see you had a wait to access NHS 24 for which I offer an apology. We absolutely appreciate that waiting an extended time for your call to be answered would have added to an already worrying time. Our service has been managing an extremely high call demand recently which unfortunately has impacted on the time taken to answer calls. Our staff have been working exceptionally hard to manage this. We are aware that waiting an extended time is not a good experience for which we are very sorry.

Your daughter’s whole journey of care appears to have been delayed which, for you as a worried parent, would have been hugely frustrating. I see my colleagues within NHS Forth Valley have been tagged to your story. They are best placed to answer in relation to your experience at A&E.

If you care to share any further detail about your call to 111, I would be pleased to hear from you. You can call me on 07814 299944 or email Patient.Experience@nhs24.scot.nhs.uk

Thanks again and best wishes to you both.

Shona

Dear Triage,

Thank you for taking the time to share your daughters recent experience in our Emergency Department, during what must have been an extremely difficult time. I am so sorry to hear of the delays you faced when accessing care and I understand this would have been hugely frustrating for you. I would like to assure you the experience you have described is not the level of service we strive to provide. We have been experiencing significant demand on our services which will have impacted on the length of time it took for your daughters assessment.

It might also help to explain that we see patients in clinical priority and as such do not operate an appointment system within the Emergency Department, following triage, patients are assigned a triage category from which we have to prioritise the sickest patients first and this may have had an impact on the length of time it took for your daughter to be seen.

If you would like to speak to me and share more detail around your daughter’s experience, I’d be grateful if you could email me on ric.atalla@nhs.scot.

Once again thank you for taking the time to share your experience and I do hope your daughter is recovering well.

Kind regards

Ric Atalla, Interim Operational Manager, Emergency Care & Inpatients

Dear Triage,

We are really sorry to hear about your experience with our service in Forth Valley. It can be very frustrating when trying to access support and we do try to make this easier for patients. We would be happy to look into this further for you to try and provide some individual feedback. If you would like to do this we would be grateful if you could forward details for your daughter (including a note of consent if she is an adult) to caroline.logan@nhs.scot

Unfortunately we can only appoint minor injuries at this moment in time and any other condition attending the Emergency Department gets an initial triage assessment with any immediately necessary treatment (such as paracetamol / pain relief) and then when a clinician is available a fuller assessment will take place. This is dependant on the severity of illness / injuries present in other individuals who are also waiting for care.

We hope everything is doing better now and your daughter is recovering.

Kind regards.

Dr Karyn Webster

OOH Clinical Lead

NHS Forth Valley