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Not good for the soul!!!!

Story from nhs.uk

"Not good for the soul!!!!"

About: Luton & Dunstable Hospital

What could be improved

You have a real staff ATTITUDE PROBLEM!

My wife has had cataract surgery a year ago and was suffering from a strange blurring in one eye. Contacting our Optician we were told to seek immediate NHS help. Entering the Accident and Emergency area and explaining our situation we were told, in a rather condescending way, that in their opinion the situation was not an emergency, and COULDN’T YOUR OPTICIAN DEAL WITH THE PROBLEM.

Very reassuring! What do we do now? The message was so what? Not what you want to hear!

Your system dictates that we need a referral and therefore needed to wait and see a nurse practitioner. If there is another way we were not informed!

We did not know that your eye clinic is closed at the weekend and relies on weekend ‘On-Call 'eye specialists? So after the nurse decided that my wife needed to see a specialist, an appointment was made.

I must say that the Doctor we saw was very good and polite and made the experience at ‘your’ Hospital bearable. I would like to say ‘my’ hospital, but given an alternative I would not want to associate myself with such an awful experience again!

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Responses

Response from Luton & Dunstable Hospital 12 years ago
Luton & Dunstable Hospital

Submitted on 19/03/2012 at 13:04
Published on nhs.uk on 20/03/2012 at 04:00

We are sorry to hear your experience was so unpleasant for you and your wife. Our usual process at the L&D is that all walk-in patients, and a proportion of patients arriving by ambulance would be seen by an experienced nurse at reception. They would then be streamed according to agreed protocols to Minors, Majors, Paediatrics, Emergency Department or the GP Urgent Clinic. The account you give of the attitude of the nurse and how you were spoken to in a condescending way is not acceptable at all. We have taken this on-board and have reinforced amongst all our staff the need to be professional at all when interacting with service users. We offer our sincerest apologies for the negative experience but thank you for bringing this to our attention so that we can work on improving our service for everyone.

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