"Getting better but still a lot of improvement in..."

What I liked

Feedback on the SRH website so far: Although the immediate outside of A&E is filthy with chewing gum, cigarettes and litter strewn all over and you have to atrociously pay a fortune for car parking to seek NHS medical treatment in an A&E dept, the reception staff were nevertheless friendly, responsive and receptive to my wife's needs.

The first nurse that saw to my wife and took her initial information, observations and blood, was excellent, very efficient and explained the process well.

The second nurse was also very good as was the doctor that examined my wife too.

Although we appear to have been somewhat forgotten about once my wife was kicked out of her private A&E treatment room and into a communal 'review area' room whilst they await her blood results for quite some time now, All in all, it was relatively a positive, efficient and effective experience by very busy and highly demanded A&E staff.

Fortunately, unlike your robotic 'computer says go and dump yourself in your local a&e dept' NHS direct colleagues that sent us here with a condition that was neither an 'emergency' nor an 'accident' because no highly paid GP's in our area bother to provide an out of Mon to Fri day time hours 'service' to their patients. Happy Christmas. Mr & Mrs Lawrance, Sunderland.

What could be improved

The overall length of time spent in A&E still needs speeding up, some heating would be great as my wife has been freezing all afternoon whilst having several layers on and a body warmer. The outside needs cleaning up and the extortionate car parking charges to visit an A&E dept urgently needs addressing. You should also sort out your robotic and useless and time waisting NHS direct colleagues out. We've spent from 1am this morning on the phone to them and were still here in A&E approaching 5pm.