Enter and view: Southmead Hospital Emergency Department

Healthwatch South Gloucestershire and Hivewatch volunteers undertook the enter and view visit during October 2018 with the purpose of understanding the experience that a patient with a learning disability would have when visiting the Emergency Department at Southmead Hospital.

On arrival at the Emergency Department patients will see the Triage Nurse, usually within 15 minutes of arrival. The Triage nurse will assess patients to ensure there are no immediate clinical risks. Patients will be prioritised depending on how unwell they are, and streamed to either the Minor Injuries Unit (MIU) or majors.

Observation by the Enter and View representatives reported that: The public entrance was easy to find and completely separate for patients arriving by ambulance; There is a fair size car park with dropping off and picking up bays. Disabled parking is available; There was a small Wayfinding directory screen to the left on entering the A Emergency Department, the screen, pictures and font were too small to be read

The Hivewatch team with their Easy Read checklists outside of the Emergency Department clearly and the instructions were not clear in explaining what to do or where to go; One of the Hivewatch volunteers commented that their overall impression of the Emergency Department was such that they would not feel nervous in coming into it.

The overall impression of the visit was that once through the registration process, patients are able to access good support and quiet spaces. The starting point for registration is not clear, there were some signs about registration but they were not prominent. It was felt that there needs to be some new signage (with easy read) in prominent places to show where a patient needs to go and what the process will be after registration. Staff training should include listening to those with learning disabilities as ‘experts by experience’.