St Lukes Hospital

I had the misfortune of requiring the services of the urgent care centre one Sunday evening. My 9 year old daughter had banged her head on the corner of a desk and was bleeding from the back of her head and crying in pain. I explained to the receptionist what had happened and her response was we dont deal with head injuries, youll have to go to Aamp;E How can it be in the interest of the patient to send them on a 12 mile trip to Aamp;E without having a health professional assess the severity of the injury? If someone had assessed her as ok to travel that distance and given us something to cover the wound then that would have been fine, but just to dismiss us like that is disgusting.

Okay it makes sense to triage people and allocate capacity. However the process of getting access should not be the subject of urban myth. Has anyone ever actually listened to the answering service and tried to fathom what option to pick? If you do find an option you must quickly note down the number hang up and then redial. The option for walk-in give no instruction but if it is urgent ring 111. What if what you need is a trained nurse and a dressing for a wound? All this investment in a new hospital is wasted be because front line staff have built barriers either intentionally or unintentionally. 111 have no knowledge of the process described in the answer service but it does a good job of cutting down on the workload for reception staff at st lukes i expect. Though from recent experience they seemed to want to expand their role to providing medical advice instead of enabling access to practicing nurses