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Original Feedback for Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (NNUH):

1

Dissappointed

My mother developed weird problem with her eyes earlier this year which considerably disrupted her vision. GP visited her at home but couldn’t properly see the back of her eye and recommended optician have a look. Optician made an appointment for couple of weeks but had to cancel short notice so did a home visit on a bank holiday to conduct NHS eye test (very impressed with this). Within a few seconds of looking in her eye he said she would have to go to the hospital and concluded that she’d had some kind of bleed at the back of her eye. Initially, saying he thought there was treatments that could be done, but after looking extensively at the back of her eye, he then thought the eye was permanently damaged and was referring her to the hospital that day. He left indicating that he hoped she wouldn’t have to wait too long and her appointment would be within a couple of weeks, because of her age and mobility he referenced all of her other hospital appointments on the referral and requested she be booked in for the same day as one of her pre-existing appointments. So we waited 2-3 weeks then get a letter from her GP for ‘self referral’ to book an eye appointment at the hospital?? Which we did and were horrified to find the earliest appointment we could make was 29 June. 3 months after home visit and still a 10 week wait at this point! We were upset by this and called the optician to ask if this was an acceptable length of time to wait and he just kept saying take it up with your GP, which we did and were told it wasn’t acceptable and could see why we were upset, but the bleed has happened, the damage is done and the referral was made for a non-urgent appointment. “It isn’t good that you have to wait that long, but that’s the NHS for you” But when the appointment time comes its important you go as they could do laser treatments on other vessels at the back of the eye that could also be liable to bleed in the future. So we finally went for the hospital appointment at the end of June person and the person we saw was an absolute pig. Extremely unpleasant patient manner, he said the eye is messed up, nothing can be done, she’ll just have to live with it, so we tried to point out what GP had said about procedures to safeguard her other eye, tried to discuss that with him and were just told ‘good afternoon’ and asked to leave the office. Waited 3 months to be treated like that! Caused an elderly woman a lot of distress and for what? Optician was lovely. Explained everything to her and set her at ease. Said that she had one good eye, one bad, she’d been coping but should she start to get any indication that a similar thing was starting to happen with the other eye, she should go straight to A&E and ask to be seen by the eye casualty people. This was also stressed by her GP, yet at the hospital no mention of it, just sent away. My sister came out of there wanting to punch the guy. I think it could be accepted if there was nothing that could be done, if they just explained it in a nice way and had time for you, but our experience of the hospital was not good and its been a similar story with other departments too.. (July 5, Sprowston)