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"No Wheelchairs Available At Main Entrance"

About: Crosshouse Hospital

(as a relative),

My mother attends the anti-coag clinic at crosshouse on a regular basis, I have to bring the car up to the drop off point as she doesn't have the ability to walk far, every time we attend I have an issue getting her a wheelchair at the main entrance, today I had to abandon her in the car at the pick up point and go hunting for a chair, found some in the x-ray department but the porters told I could not take them as they needed them! ! Didn't argue as I could tell from there tone I wasn't getting one, headed up the lifts and found one on level 4, 25 mins have now passed whilst looking for a chair.

At the bottom of the lifts there were 3 porters standing so I approached them and asked why there is never an adequate supply of wheelchairs at the main entrance, one responded by saying that wasn't there job! ! The other said I was doing a good job getting it myself and the other just laughed, I must stress it was all discussed in good humour and I don't blame them, it is a very trivial thing to complain about in the grand scale of what a hospital does on a day to day basis but can be such problem when we attend the hospital. Please tell me who is responsible for making sure there are wheelchairs available at the main entrance and in future make sure there are chairs available

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Responses

Response from NHS Ayrshire and Arran 8 years ago
Submitted on 05/01/2016 at 09:55
Published on Care Opinion at 11:31


Dear Wheelchair hunter,

We are disappointed to hear about your experience in finding a wheelchair at the front entrance. We find that every morning we have sufficient wheelchairs but by 10.30-11.00am they can all be in use. We have staff whose duty it is to go to each ward level every morning and retrieve wheelchairs. We did purchase new additional wheelchairs, linked like supermarket trolleys, to encourage the users to return them to the front entrance, unfortunately people circumvented the £1 coin using all sorts of tools to release the chair. We do have some out of use at present awaiting repair and we are looking to get these repaired quickly to get back into circulation. We will also look for some additional funding to purchase some more.

J Gillan (Manager)

Head of Clinical Support Services - East

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