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No food available

Story from nhs.uk

"No food available"

About: Northern General Hospital

After several hours at A&E my elderly mum needed food and a hot drink.

It was difficult walking to the restaurant as I suffer with hip problem.

I arrived at approximately 7 45 pm to find it closed. At least there was the option (or so I thought) of vending machine food.

I was wrong.

Both the food and hot beverage machines were out of order.

I was and still am, absolutely incredulous and horrified at such a disgusting state of affairs in any hospital, let alone a huge A&E hospital as the Northern General.

Surely, just basic food and hot drink should be available at any time.

Why is a basic necessity such a problem?

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Responses

Response from Deborah Hopkinson, Patient Experience Co-ordinator, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust 7 years ago
Deborah Hopkinson
Patient Experience Co-ordinator,
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Submitted on 19/05/2016 at 16:52
Published on Care Opinion on 20/05/2016 at 09:24

I am very sorry to hear about your experiences which I will escalate to senior managers and will provide an update on Patient Opion about this situation. If however, you would wish to provide more personal details through our Patient Services Team we will be pleased to provide a more personal response to your concerns.

The team can be contacted by telephoning 0114 271 2400 or emailing pst@sth.nhs.uk

Kind regards

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Response from Deborah Hopkinson, Patient Experience Co-ordinator, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust 7 years ago
We have made a change
Deborah Hopkinson
Patient Experience Co-ordinator,
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Submitted on 26/07/2016 at 10:26
Published on Care Opinion at 12:41

Sorry for the delay in responding to the posting. The Catering Manager has looked into the concerns and her finding are:

The Huntsman dining room is open for business daily between 7am and 7pm. After this time meals, snacks, hot and cold beverage vending services are in operation across the hospital. As a result of this posting signage will be placed outside Huntsman dining room sign posting customers to the nearest and type of vending machines.

Huntsman dining room staff work up to 8pm and would have been available to offer assistance to customers arriving around 7.45pm had they been made aware of them experiencing difficulty with meal and beverage choices. We are sorry that we did not have the opportunity to help on this occasion.

We found one instance of a faulty food vendor on 18 April 2016 situated in Huntsman dining room due to meals not dispensing. The machine operator attended site early the next day and rectified the problem. The back-up light meal vendor situated outside of the dining room was in working order and stocked that evening. All other vending machines were as far as we know in working order as both our records and those of the vending operators do not highlight any problem with machines in either Huntsman dining room or A&E at that time.

I hope that this information is helpful and demonstrates that we do listen to feedback and make changes accordingly.

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