Medical Centre

[XIV]

I have been lucky enough to never fall ill before or at Glastonbury, however this year on the Tuesday before leaving I left work on my bike on a small 4 mile bike trip home and picked up a small cold. Wednesday came and I had a small cough and a tickly cough but nothing serious enough to stop me from attending Glastonbury, I had a lemsiq before driving down from the North West and felt fine. Thursday I had a few ciders and I felt fine again, Friday my cough was a little worse and breathing was more difficult.

Saturday night after Metallica, I being extremely stubborn thought I could brush this off and be fine but my girlfriend dragged me the medical centre. I was dealt with absolutely fantastically, seen to almost immediately upon arrival, the guy and lady on the desk on entry took my details and took a photo of me, the doctor was fantastic, she offered advice and sorted me a prescription to pick up on site. I had a chest infection, it wasn’t exactly life threatening more a nuisance to carry that around with me for the weekend.

I am almost back to myself now. I just wanted to thank the lovely people who dealt with me and ask if anyone else has any experience of the Medical Centre?

[oldbird]

I fractured my wrist on Saturday night. Festival Medical Services xrayed it and put it in plaster. Can't praise them enough

[Abster]

I broke me leg in 08, x-rayed and plastered on site. First year they had the x-ray equipment on site. Again I can't praise them enough.

[CrackityJones]

I paid a visit there on the Thursday night after my friend got over-excited, picked me up and threw me around like a rag doll before promptly dropping me on the floor.

They were excellent - I was seen really quickly and all the staff were lovely despite it being 2am and me being slightly worse for wear. I was patched up and sent on my way in under 20 minutes (nothing serious - just a sprained thumb and a few cuts and bruises)

[balti-pie]

Was your friend Paco Pico Piedra?

[guypjfreak]

be there 4 times and they have all been really great people up there lucky it was nothing as serious as a broken leg ect BUT when i did smash my ankle on a sunday night i was a tad gutted that there was no one around to help me out but hey ho thats the way it goes

[Jules007]

Anyone know how/who to ask to work it?

[CCCheese]

Jules

http://www1.festival-medical.com/cms/

[Leggins]

I paid a visit to the medical centre on the Wednesday morning just after arrving and discovering I had left some medication I needed at home. I was surprised at how busy it was so early on in the festival and waited about an hour and a half (no problem with that at all as my problem was way down the list of priorities).

Interestingly, 3 people were waiting to the see the dentist, the rest from what I could determine were physical injuries due to falls etc on the way in. (apart from one guy who was clutching a sick bowl) One lady had taken a particularly nasty fall onto her face, looked very painful and she had a real shiner.

It was very interesting to see the set up and I thought it would be good to be a fly on the wall at 0300 on the Saturday night.

Anyway, I saw a doctor, paid for my prescription and off I went, very happy.

[pie_and_a_pint]

It was very interesting to see the set up and I thought it would be good to be a fly on the wall at 0300 on the Saturday night.

[Leggins]

I'm sad to say I was a fly on the wall at 0300 on Saturday night. I broke my ankle on Saturday evening and I'm afraid my Festival Medical experience was not brilliant, to the extent where the long wait actually made quite a simple injury worse.

Yeovil hospital, on the other hand, were great, once I finally got there.

[Zoo Music Girl]

I too would like to praise the medical staff. We had occasion to visit them twice this year and they were brilliant both times. I had a nasty splinter that was looking a bit red and angry, which a lovely young man swiftly removed for me. Then my friend got into a bit of bother on the Friday night and they were incredible with him: really warm, friendly, professional and reassuring. Thumbs up all round.

Also used them in 2010, when two friends had leg/foot injuries. They were great then too. Very impressive.

[citrine]

I had to visit the medical tent on Thursday evening after I lost a filling before I left for Glasto and the pain got unbearable and I went to try and get some strong painkillers, not realising there was a dentist... The dentist was awesome, (I have a dentist phobia) he made me feel at ease, did a partial root canal and left it feeling much better. I want to track him down and make him my own dentist fantastic staff..

[Jules007]

I'm sad to say I was a fly on the wall at 0300 on Saturday night. I broke my ankle on Saturday evening and I'm afraid my Festival Medical experience was not brilliant, to the extent where the long wait actually made quite a simple injury worse.

Yeovil hospital, on the other hand, were great, once I finally got there.

[pie_and_a_pint]

Thanks for the link CCCheese

How did you manage the broken ankle pie n

pint?!

[TheNewUnion]

Met up with a group who worked at Festival Medical Services. No idea how good they were at their jobs but if they were as good as they were friendly then they'd be awesome.

As an aside, they said they had to work Reading to ensure work at Glastonbury.

[Jules007]

I slipped in the mud on the path up Kidney Mead. Sober, I might add... It took them well over an hour to get a vehicle to help me out as I clearly couldn't walk, so I nearly had hypothermia by the time they got me off the

ground. I was seen quite quickly but was then left waiting for six hours overnight on a plastic camping chair before I got taken to Yeovil, by which time I was desparately cold and tired and my ankle was swollen so severely that I couldn't

have the surgery I needed to fix it. Not a great experience.

[pie_and_a_pint]

Thats a bloody awful story! sorry to hear it.

Im betting the medical team didnt understand the severity of your injury and bloody left you there too long, think id rather be pissed! hope you had a hip flask to warm you up. Did you come back to the fest afterwards?

[Guest]

No, I had to go home straight from Yeovil - Mr P&P had to pack up all of our stuff, then drive to Yeovil then take me home. I've just got back from my local hospital having finally had the operation I needed to fix the break, two weeks after the accident. My consultant was unimpressed to say the least that I'd not been taken to hospital quicker - in his words 'I suppose your injury took second place to the idiot ketamine users, did it?' which was exactly correct.

[eoJ]

No, I had to go home straight from Yeovil - Mr P&P had to pack up all of our stuff, then drive to Yeovil then take me home. I've just got back from my local hospital having finally had the operation I needed to fix the break, two weeks after the accident. My consultant was unimpressed to say the least that I'd not been taken to hospital quicker - in his words 'I suppose your injury took second place to the idiot ketamine users, did it?' which was exactly correct.

[pie_and_a_pint]

you realise a lot of the people who work these things are unpaid volunteers giving up there time to look after others? your talking about a festival with 140000 people attending so on a saturday night with the conditions being what they were you were probably waiting so long simply due to busyness same as any a&e department in the land, I actually find you trying to blame the volunteer medical staff for your injury getting worse quite disgusting....put it this way youd have been a lot worse off if they werent there at all eh?

and you have the cheek to compare the festival medical staff to a fuilly equipped full time hospital.....thats just astounding.

Feel sorry for you for your injury but your attitude stinks.

Edited July 14, 2014 by pie_and_a_pint

[fewcloudy]

I'm not an expert on broken bones - it's actually my NHS orthopedic consultant who's blaming the Festival Medical staff for making the injury worse. Festival Medical x-rayed my ankle and should have got me to Yeovil hospital right away because breaks of that kind need immediate (within a few hours) surgery. They failed to do this. So I think the consultant is quite within his rights to think that what they did was inadequate and led to the surgery I eventually had this weekend being more complex and painful (and costly to the NHS).

I appreciate the Festival Medical are volunteers. But unpaid or not they still have a duty of care to people brought to them. They have a lot of decent equipment (x-ray machines, etc.) but they struggled in the extreme on Saturday night to cope with some fairly basic needs, largely because of the huge numbers of drink and drugs cases being brought in to be looked after. In this case they simply need to get people that they cannot help off site and into hospital right away.

I find your comments about my 'attitude' upsetting but I'm not willing to enter into a long and protracted argument about this, so I'd appreciate it if you'd accept my dissatisfaction with my medical centre experience is merely a contribution to a thread that asked for medical centre experiences.

[Bubblecup]

May I suggest you contact FMS with your feedback, although there may have been genuine reasons for your delay feedback both positive and negative helps to improve the service for next year

[Bubblecup]

Staff nurse here, and agree with all you say. Irrelevant whether they are volunteers or not, most definately have the same duty of care regardless.

Sounds like a typical Fri/Sat night here in Edinburgh A&E, and you don't get absolved from fuck-ups just because it's busy with piss-heads, ridiculous to think you should...

And I don't think you necessarily would have been worse off if they hadn't been there at all, as thatcrazypenguin states. An ambulance would have been called and you would have been taken to hospital and got there considerably quicker, certainly within the 2 hours that your consultant explained to you, than what actually happened due to going through the 'medical centre' first. You are actually quite fortunate as some types of fractures, esp following crush or impact, can quickly lead to loss of the limb or life if treatment isn't commenced very quickly.

fc

Edited July 14, 2014 by Bubblecup

[pie_and_a_pint]

Thank you fewcloudy - I appreciate your post. I realise that as bad as it was, my injury could have been significantly worse - I've been very lucky thanks to Yeovil being brilliant and doing everything they could, and the John Radcliffe in Oxford being even more brilliant when presented with a very big mess to sort out.

And yes, Bubblecup, I will be contacting Festival Medical with my feedback - I'd like them to learn from it so that if the same thing happens next year, no-one has to go through the pain and stress I have. I understand that a broken bone is not life-threatening, but my injury was complex and certainly limb-threatening and could have been much less serious if it had been dealt with in a timely way not dismissed as 'just a fracture'.

Edited July 14, 2014 by pie_and_a_pint