"Worst gospital ever!"

Dear Steven – I am sorry you found your visit to the A&E department at Southmead to be a poor experience and that you had to wait for pain relief. You will have noticed a great deal of building work continues on site and this will, when completed, provide a new patient car park with direct access to the hospital. It will also relieve pressure on the parking situation across the site and so create more spaces in the dedicated A&E car park. Transfer buses are available from the current multi-story car park and I am sorry if this was not clear to you.

Regrettably A&E can be very busy and unfortunately clinical priority can mean long waits for less severe cases. The decision that your care could be appropriately managed in the primary care setting provided by your GP would have been made by an experienced clinician. I appreciate your injury was very painful, but it would appear that on the day you attended the need to treat more clinically urgent cases contributed to your long wait. In an ideal world patients should never have to wait to be triaged and to receive pain relief, but due to finite resources at busy times delays can occur, please accept my apologies you had to wait and that your experience was not optimal. Thank you for taking the time and trouble to post your views.

Kind regards – Steve Sykes

Advice and Complainants Team