Video set to reassure patients

QUEEN Mary Hospital's accident and emergency department is to be turned into a film set sometime in the next few months.

But the resulting film will not be a frivolous fiction about doctors and nurses. Instead, it will be a video informing people of what they can expect when they enter the department as patients.

The hospital's chief executive, Dr Vivian Wong Taam Chi-woon, said the aim was to reassure possibly nervous or tense patients that they were being cared for, even when it appeared the system was ignoring them.

''We appreciate that in an acute situation. When you ask people to sit and wait, they need to know why they are waiting,'' she said. ''I think it's important for people to understand our system so they know that more urgent cases are seen first and they don't think some one is jumping the queue.'' The hospital currently has a pamphlet on the accident and emergency procedure but feels a video would be more effective.

It will be shown in the department's waiting area.