"Lack of considerate preparation"

My appointment was booked for 11:10. I eventually received my Covid jab at 12:45. There were two queues - booked and walk-in. I had to find out which queue was which (they had merged at the back) in order to ensure that the man behind me in a wheelchair was in the pre-booked queue where he should have been. Both queues were being dealt with simultaneously, which meant the pre-booked time was meaningless and your place in the queue was entirely dependent on when you happened to turn up.

There were many people in the queue who were in their 80s and showing signs of considerable ill-health and in some cases distress. One elderly lady collapsed, but this was not the cause of the queues but rather a consequence, since she had already been standing for around 40-60 minutes. She was attended to and put in a wheelchair to await an ambulance, but I had to ask the supermarket staff to provide a blanket over her legs, which I would have thought to have been an obvious and immediate response from your team.

When it began to rain heavily, some gave up and others stood there stoically. When I got to the front of the queue, I was asked not for my booking number, but my NHS number, followed by a series of questions that could have been dealt with online to expedite rapid transit at the clinic. The marquee blew over in the wind and happily no-one was injured, but this suggests an obvious lack of health and safety oversight. The queues were so long that people were advised to go into the supermarket to alert against receiving a parking charge, which added to people's stress. I was assiduously courteous and appreciative of your staff, but sadly not everyone managed to be so after their miserable morning.

My complaint is not against your on-site staff who were doing their best, but whoever has management responsibility for organising these clinics. I believe the lack of considerate preparation showed an extraordinary disregard for the health and well-being of the elderly standing outside for two hours. In the early days of Covid, it was quite understandable that crisis clinics needed to respond to a pandemic for which we were not fully prepared. Four years later I recommend that urgent care is given to providing pop-up clinics in ways that do not contribute adversely to the health of the elderly who are being treated. I hope the senior managers concerned can learn from this chaos and ensure it is never allowed to happen again.

Recommendations:

- have a day for pre-booked appointments only

- have signs up that indicate the appointment time to queue behind to ensure some correlation between booked time and treatment time rather than a randomised queue.

- have questions dealt with at the online booking stage and provide a scannable QR code or number, to expedite processing on the day.

- protect the queue from car park traffic some of which came very close to the queue

- have seating alongside the queue for the frail

- implement untimed free car parking for those with pre-booked jabs

- ask the question: how do we ensure that every patient is treated with dignity and respect?

- protect your onsite staff from upset patients by getting proper planning and delivery that is effective, efficient and respectful to all.