As part of Feedback February we’re sharing stories about staff members who have individually named as part of patient feedback on Care Opinion.
Care Opinion is a place where you can share your experience of health or care services, and help make them better for everyone. Using Care Opinion means that by sharing honest experiences of care, we learn to see the world differently. Working together, we can all help make care better.
You can submit your feedback on our Care Opinion page.
Community Nurse, Sophie Milligan was singled out in patent feedback on Care Opinion when she went the extra mile last year to help a patient in their own home after a fall.
Sophie explained that she turned up to house as normal but the house was locked and no one was answering the door. She said: “I was visiting one of my patients in their own home and when I got to the door I realised that it was locked and there was no key box for me to be able to get an entry.
“I looked through the letter box and I saw my patient lying on the floor and screaming in excruciating pain and she’s unable to move and let me in the door.
“After walking around the outside of the house I find a small window that was open at the front, so I was able to actually pull myself through the window, and I was able to gain entry that way and then I rang an ambulance and her family.
“She told me that she’d fallen in the early hours of the morning and she’d been lying there for probably over eight hours so she was unable to move as well and it was just terrible so I was fairly sure that she’d broken at least one of her bones.”
After gaining entry and phoning an ambulance, Sophie comforted the patient; covering her with a duvet to keep her warm and repositioning her with pillows without causing further injury then waiting for the ambulance to arrive.
Sophie said: “The adrenaline kicked in and I just knew you had to get inside because it was so important. I knew that the ambulance would be a few hours so I thought right I have to get in so I thought I need to get in some way so yeah I saw the window and I just thought just do it.
“She was obviously so grateful and when I did get in she’s just happy to see a friendly face.”
The patients took time out to go on Care Opinion and share her appreciation for Sophie’s care and support throughout this incident but also highlighting the care and support she’d received over her time with the community nursing team.
Sophie said that receiving written feedback on Care Opinion gave her a new sense of self-confidence in her role. She said: “I was just extremely humbled to be honest and because I’m just newly qualified it’s given me you know a spur on it’s given me a lot more confidence now because I think nursing is a career where you really doubt yourself a lot, so it’s nice to get lovely feedback.
“We get lots of verbal feedback from the patients but somebody actually taking the time out of their day to go on and write something is just amazing, so humbled and so grateful for it really.”