HAVING spent several visits now as a patient at our great new hospital, I feel I can now put my finger on the problem of bed blocking and it's not the patients. No it's the pharmacy department.

Now let me explain. Myself and several other patients have come to the same conclusion.

Medical staff (doctors) said we could be discharged from hospital at 9am in the morning.

Yet we still seem to find ourselves having to wait for our drug prescription to be returned from the pharmacy at 5pm in the evening, taking up vital bed space on the wards for several hours.

The drugs sent to pharmacy were drugs brought in by the patient in the first place only to be returned several hours later.

So for the sake of empting beds and saving a long wait for patients on trolleys, pharmacies at the new hospital please get your act together.

T COLLINS

Penhill

(trolley wait record holder)