A visit to A&E

Posted on by

A few days ago I had the unexpected pleasure of seeing how well Royal Derby Hospital’s A&E department works.

Unexpected, because I fell on an ice patch in the office car park, managing to bang my head and elbow as gravity took its inevitable course. A pleasure, because although it was very busy (I suspect that rather a lot of their patients had done similar things to me that morning), their systems worked beautifully. Over the course of the three hour wait that was estimated accurately on arrival, I saw seven different people on my way around and every single one of them was helpful and courteous.

Fortunately, I didn’t do too much damage to myself. My elbow was sore, but unbroken, but I was warned that my golf swing and double-handed tennis strokes will probably never be as good as they were. This news made me very happy that I don’t play either sport!

When I arrived home, I tweeted about my positive experience. I’m pleased to report that the hospital’s social media team are also on the ball.

Anyway, it’s back to my routine visit to the same hospital tomorrow morning to see how far the lymphoma has progressed. The haematology team is great too. All of my experiences of Derby Hospitals during the last six months (and there have been too many of those) makes me value the NHS even more than I did previously.