General Discussion

Im well aware that in a country like ours with a free for all NHS A & E service we should all be gratefull for being able to use this facility. But has anyone had the miss fortune of visiting the A & E at Torbay Hospital late at night.

What an absolutley appalling experience. Thank god for the RD&E Exeter and the excellent service they provide.

Torbay your staff need better training in public relations and your systems need a total overhaul because your A & E dept just does not work.

Official complaint in the post.

I once sat in A&E Torbay whilst my son (in his 20s) went in for treatment, was diagnosed, scanned,anaesthetised, operated on and admitted without anyone telling me anything for 5 hours! But he was sorted, the op was purely exploratory and case solved so I can't fault the treatment...second to none...and that is really what it's all about.

Differing experiences at Torbay - on the one hand they saved my Dad's life because one of the doctors recognised the slightly unusual thinig he had wrong with him and got treatment sorted so quickly that he was saved from brain damage and possible death, so obviously very grateful to them for that.  But then we had a time when my son got concussion and by the time they saw him in A&E he had waited in reception so long that he was past the point where they needed to have him under observation so they said there was no point checking him out and sent us home.  Or the time I went in a few weeks after major surgery in the early hours of the morning because of a complication to a totally empty waiting room and was kept waiting for 2 hours before I saw anyone despite being told I needed to be seen urgently when I phoned before going there.  And when my Dad was kept in Torbay following his time in A&E, and he was there for over 2 weeks, the nursing staff were dreadful in the most part and we had to be there a lot of the time to make sure he got the treatment he needed.  But I had my children there and they were brilliant, couldn't fault them and we have had other things done that have gone very smoothly so as Huw says, that's what it is really all about but at the end of the day they are only human and it must be depressing dealing with all the things that come in day in day out so sometimes I guess they just get it wrong.  And of course we only see a small part of what goes on behind the scenes.