"A quality visit"

Thank you for getting in touch Donna and we're pleased that you felt so well looked after by our colleagues in the Lister's emergency department - we've just shared your comments with them and we know that they will be delighted to read them.

On the point of waiting times, there are two factors at work here.

One is staffing levels - recruiting to the available posts is very hard, especially for doctors.

We're doing better than many hospitals around the country, but it's still a challenge and we do have to rely on temporary staff more than we would like - but we are getting there.

Secondly, whilst attendances are rising, it's the increase in those being brought in by emergency ambulance that's caused an imbalance in the workload of emergency departments such as the Lister.

Often these people are the frail elderly, who also have multiple health problems - which makes them harder to treat and more likely to need a range of specialist interventions whilst with us.

The consequence is that too many of patients with more minor injuries and illnesses have to wait longer to be seen.

This is why we're changing our staffing model so that we have more staff with the necessary skills - such as emergency nurse practitioners - to be available to care for this important group of patients.

Indeed if these individuals had rung NHS111 first, they may have been redirected to a different service and avoided the wait altogether.

We hope that this latter explanation was helpful and we do very much appreciate your kind words about our emergency department.