"Pharmacy service for outpatients (Celia Blakey Centre)"

Earlier this week I attended the Celia Blakey chemotherapy unit for the regular collection of my meds. This was my fifth appointment and was delayed for 35 minutes due to the pharmacy not providing the required tablets on time. This was the third time (out of five) that Pharmacy has failed to perform. I understand that Pharmacy are provided with the appointment time for each patient in order to ensure that patients receive treatment in a timely fashion. There can be no excuse for failing to meet appointment times with such regularity. These delays can only add to the stress of chemotherapy, which is not exactly the easiest of treatments for patients to undergo, Not to mention the additional time, and therefore costs of longer car parking times.

In my case, Pharmacy has failed to provide a satisfactory service with only a 40% success rate. I am sure you will agree that Pharmacy should perform considerably better and I look forward to this improvement.

A simple remedy for the problem would be to provide a member of the existing staff to be dedicated, amongst any other duties, to provide this service. After all it can only be 1 prescription per half-hour or so, judging from my impression of patient turnover in CBC.

Of course I recognise that hospital pharmacies are busy places, but yours must improve in this relatively small area. Not only would it provide better service to patients, it would save the nursing staff in CBC the embarrassment of having to apologise so often - it would also save them having to make extra cups of tea for the delayed patients!

Finally, I would express my appreciation of the nursing staff. In my experience they represent everything that nursing should be - efficient, caring and unflustered. It is just a shame that they have to work with other parts of the organisation which are not.