"The Childrens Consultant"

Thank you for posting feedback about your son’s experience of our Children’s Outpatients Department at Russells Hall Hospital. We are very sorry to hear about your experience and for any anxiety this is causing. We appreciate that this must be very concerning for you.

Unfortunately, we have experienced difficulty recruiting paediatric doctors and this has, regrettably, affected the availability of outpatient appointments for children.

We are working very hard to recruit two permanent consultants which will ease the situation and enable us to see our young patients more quickly. In the meantime, we have employed a locum consultant on a temporary basis to provide extra appointments for children until posts have been filled. We are also looking into whether employing specialist paediatric nurses could help us to see more children in our clinics.

We are also looking at ways to change our appointment booking process to help us reduce delays in making appointments.

We would like to assure you that all comments are taken seriously and acted upon as part of our ongoing commitment to improving patient experience and so we have passed your comments onto the manager for children’s outpatients.

If you would like us to look into this further for you, please contact our Assistant Directorate Manager responsible for this area on 01384 456111 extension 1415.