Long waits to be seen in casualty are ‘disgusting’
Last Thursday, I took my neighbour to the casualty department at Barnsley Hospital at 12.30 am.
This gentlemen is in his 80s and was told by a local nurse to go due to his leg being very swollen.
He booked in and was seen by a nurse after 15 minutes.
He was then asked to wait to see a doctor. For once, the waiting room was quiet and was half full.
People came and went and then at 7.30am, he decided to ask someone at reception what the problem was.
She said there was an eight-hour waiting time.
My neighbour said why did you not tell me this when I came in? No answer.
He then made the decision to book out and go to his doctor’s at 8am. By the way, while he was waiting, he was chatting to another senior citizen who had been waiting longer than him.
It is a disgusting to treat our elderly this way.
Shame on you, Barnsley Hospital management.
■ A hospital spokesperson said: We are very sorry that some people attending the Emergency Department (ED) are waiting longer than we would like at the moment.
Our Emergency Department has been much busier than usual for a number of weeks now and when we are busy we do have to prioritise ambulance handovers so that ambulances can get out as quickly as possible to those dialling 999.
Unfortunately, this means during these busy times people can experience a longer wait.
Alongside this, Barnsley Hospital has the same issues as the general population around Covid sickness absence, and although we do use our robust plans to deal with any staff gaps, there is still pressure of staff absence which applies to all hospitals.
We are also seeing a lot of people who could be helped by their
GP or who could get advice and treatments from a pharmacy and we would ask people to please consider if they could reasonably use these alternative services before coming to ED as this would allow our staff to see people more quickly.
We are working hard to reduce wait times and we thank people for their patience in what is still a challenging time.