UNSAFE AND UPSETTING FOR STAFF AND PATIENTS (OPEN LETTER)
Professor IAN ABBS
Chief Executive and Chief Medical Officer
Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust
Trust Offices
St Thomas’ Hospital
Westminster Bridge Road
London SE1 7HE
Date: 20th May 2022
Dear Professor Abbs
Re: WAITING TIMES FOR CHEMOTHERAPY PRESCRIPTIONS
UNSAFE AND UPSETTING FOR STAFF AND PATIENTS
It is with a heavy heart that I feel compelled to complain about the level of service currently being provided by the pharmacy team at Guy’s Hospital for the staff and patients in the chemotherapy village. There appears to be an ongoing repetitive problem with inappropriate and substantial delays for planned outpatient chemotherapy prescriptions being dispensed.
This is causing upset for your staff, distress for your patients and creates an unsafe feeling due to the visible constant stress that both pharmacy staff and the unit staff are under. It has the horrific traits of an accident waiting to happen.
I am in the midst of a potentially 24 week course of chemotherapy, which involves me coming to the chemotherapy village nearly every day of the week.
The staff in the village are amazing and absolutely committed to providing the best care, which includes minimising the amount of time that myself and other patients have to spend in the unit. I know you will be aware of how precious every day is for those being treated for complex cancers.
On Thursday 19th May, I came to Guy’s at 8.30am, I finished my chemotherapy infusions at 12:30 am. I finally left the unit with Cytotoxic component which I have to have connected via picc line for further three days at 5:40pm.
There were several people in a similar situation to me – not only was a beautiful day with the sun shining taken from me and others, but there were not even enough seats in the reception area to accommodate everybody who was waiting. Your staff were also becoming visibly upset, one nurse was in tears what was going on. This is the longest I have waited so far, but it is regularly more than 2 hours. Your staff does not deserve to be under the pressure because your pharmacy does not or cannot do the job on time.
It would seem to me there are too few staff and too much work. On other hand I was told from secure sources that there are not all the medications available as should be due to the Brexit and you are not getting all the components to your pharmacy on time. Reducing the workload would literally be a death sentence to many in these post Covid 19 catch up times.
So, it would seem you either need good supplier or more staff or ask the existing one to work more hours or all three together.
You are in the incredibly fortunate situation of having a well-funded charity established to support the work of the hospital – seemingly with £960 million in reserves. If you need to spend a £1million to sort out this current hiatus, I would be amazed. But it really does need sorting, please.
The upset for all cannot continue – and the risk of mistakes being made is too high.
Thank you for your help in resolving this urgent situation.
Yours sincerely
Zdenko Kos MSc MEc BScEcon(Hons) MBA
