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Tracey Coles and her son Lewis

MOTHER Tracey Coles is angry that no one at her GP surgery was able to assess an injury to her five-year-old son's head.

Wiltshire Primary Care Trust shut the Minor Injury Unit at Devizes Hospital last September and now patients have to travel to Chippenham or Trowbridge hospitals.

As a result GP surgeries in the Devizes area have been seeing more patients with minor injuries.

They have said that they are not always able to give treatment and that, under their contracts, GPs are not required to provide such treatment.

Mrs Coles, of Osmund Road, Devizes, took Lewis to Southbroom Surgery after being called to pick him up from Bishops Cannings Primary School where he had tripped and cut his head on a chair on March 14.

Mrs Coles, who has three other children, said: "I would have gone to Devizes Hospital's Minor Injury Unit had it still been open but I didn't know where to go so I went to my GP's surgery.

"The school had put a bandage on Lewis's head and he had blood down his face. When I got to the surgery at 12.30pm I asked the receptionist if a nurse could have a look and assess Lewis.

"She said no and I would have to go to Chippenham or Trowbridge Hospital. I said I would be quite happy to drive to Chippenham if I knew he had to go there but I wanted someone to assess him first.

"The receptionist went upstairs and when she came back said she could offer me an appointment at 3pm. I said that was no good as I had to pick up my other children."

Mrs Coles, a 36-year-old carer, went home with Lewis and looked at the wound herself and saw that it was just a scrape and so cleaned it up. Lewis suffered no ill effects.

Mrs Coles said: "I feel very angry that Devizes has no Minor Injury Unit anymore. We have an ever increasing population in Devizes with new houses being built and new schools. What if I had been someone with no transport? Maybe I would have called an ambulance and wasted NHS money or maybe someone's life."

Dr James Kay of Southbroom Surgery was unable to comment on individual cases but said: "The closure of Devizes Minor Injury Unit has caused a loss of both an appropriate facility and of nurses with appropriate skills to treat certain categories of patients.

"The demands on modern General Practice mean that the service provided has to be geared to delivering mostly scheduled care and it is not possible to have staff constantly on standby for potential emergencies, whereas the staffing of an MIU unit is geared to provide an emergency service.

"We try to be accommodating as far as we can be in seeing some patients who would have previously been seen at MIU but with limited facilities there is a limit to the service we can safely provide.

"It is regrettable that the current arrangements mean that patients have to travel a considerable distance to get appropriate treatment."

12:15pm Thursday 27th March 2008

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