I do admire our Doctors and Nurses at Eastbourne District General Hospital, and we the population of Eastbourne are trying to put right the decisions of the Hospital Trust that have put some patients in dire situations as they have to be transferred by Ambulances from their homes in Eastbourne to the Conquest Hospital in Hastings and vice versa.
However, unfortunately I’ve now had first hand experience of the problems when my Mother of over a hundred years of age fell in her Care Home which turned into a nightmare of events which I shall not forget in a hurry, even though my Mother has.
We received a telephone call at home that Mother had fallen and of course you are always in the middle of doing things and panic sets in as you try to remember to turn off switches and secure your property and rush to the hospital only to find you have arrived at the same time as the ambulance.
All in all there were five patients on trolleys waiting in the passageway just beyond the point of access into the A & E where the ambulances off-load their patients.
My wife wistfully remarked ‘Because your Mother is over a hundred they will probably give her precedence!’ Wishful thinking! We stayed in that passageway for an hour and a half before moving into a cubicle and then waited a further three hours before any treatment came my Mother’s way.
She became restless and I asked someone how long we would have to wait and I was told rather haughtily that other patients had waited a lot longer. My answer to that should have been. WHY!?! But instead I meekly returned to the seat by my Mother’s side in the cubicle.
I suppose it is more of a TRADITION, rather than a SERVICE we get in A & E, that every patient brought in has to wait for four and half hours before treatment can begin, it doesn’t matter how bad the accident was or how old the patient is. Whether it is lack of staff on duty at any given time or bad organisation by the TRUST, I should think that both of those things are a close run race.
Because of the changes the Management have made, those skills have left Eastbourne DGH and transferred to the Conquest Hospital, because most Doctors and Nurses are multi-tasking people and probably that is why there is a shortfall in treatment.
From 10pm to almost 4am the following day, my Mother was subjected to various tests, which included a CT Scan, X-rays on chest stomach legs, blood tests galore and anything else you can think of and at the end of it all, she was asked what year it was. If after having to go through all those tests at 100 years and 11 months plus the lack of sleep – would you have remembered?
My Mother is safely back in her Care Home and looking forward to her 101st birthday on 21st October (Trafalgar Day) 2013.