"Co-operation between health care providers"

Anything else?

After my wife (aged 78) suffered a crush injury to her foot, we went to the Minor Injuries Unit at Brixham Hospital (Torbay and South Devon Health and Care Trust) where she was seen by a nurse practitioner, who was able to have a lengthy consultation with a colleague and a consultant at Torbay Hospital over the interpretation of an X-ray of my wife's foot. She was able to arrange for my wife to go immediately to the Fracture Clinic at Torbay Hospital (South Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust) for the fitting of a boot, and she was reviewed there at the next available out-patients clinic. The patient pathway I have outlined is commonplace in such accidents, but what is not commonplace is the speed with which things happened, the high level of co-operation between staff in a community hospital and their colleagues in the acute hospital, and the unfailing courtesy and kindness of all the staff concerned. As a retired medic and former chairman of a highly-rated NHS Trust in the North of England, and I can say with some experience that this was NHS practice at its best.