"Hospital treatment was fine, but the Pharmacy..."

What I liked

My 93 yearold aunt had an appointment with oncology outpatients and was taken to the hospital from her nursing home and I met them there.

We were seen promptly and a further appointment was made for next week.

The doctors and staff were all helpful and courteous and my aunt was given a prescription , which is where the problem was.

What could be improved

I took the prescription to a Pharmacy and waited and waited. I had a cup of coffee and a sandwich and waited some more.

In total I waited for 55minutes for a simple presciption to be dispensed and according to the screen outside only about 12 patients had their medication dispensed in that time.

That was bad enough, but when I handed the form in the staff did not ask for any information apart from the post code, no mention of possible drug allergies etc .

When I was finally handed the drugs, which included high dose steroids, no information or explanation was given to me, let alone a steroid card.

Anything else?

As you might have deduced I am Pharmacist, now retired.

I worked in community for 42 years, where I would never have tolerated the slip-shod performance that I observed..

There is more to running any business than putting your staff in corporate shirts.

I now volunteer several hours a week at the Pharmacy in my local hospital, so I do appreciate the higher bureaucratic load within the hospital environment.

However the Hospital Pharmacists with whom I work would not have put up with such a shoddy execution of professional working practices.

How about bringing your Pharmacy services back in-house and/or making sure that they operate to a higher standard.