"Long delays in being seen and admitted"

My wife has had to be taken to Darent Valley hospital 3 times in the last 3 months, with severe breathing problems. Our experience on all 3 occasions is the hospital needs to be a lot larger, and with a lot more staff to deal with the volumes of patients going or being sent there by the 111 service or GPs.

1st visit, sent by 111 service. Triage took about an hour to be seen and it took 8 hours waiting to see a doctor, only to be told she needed an x-ray (could this not have been decided at the time of triage?). Another 2 hours after the x-ray was spent sitting in the main waiting area to see the doctor again to tell her she has pneumonia and fluid on her lung. A total of 27 hours in A&E before a bed was found.

2 weeks were spent on Palm ward, staff very good but obviously rushed off their feet. 1 week Hospital at Home care, again the staff that came out were very good. This was followed by 2 visits to the Ambulatory care, where she was discharged on the 2nd visit, despite having a lot of chest pain and still having fluid on the lung.

2 weeks later, 2nd visit to A&E with the same problem. Once again 7 to 8 hours waiting to see a doctor and another 27 hours before a bed could be found. Once again the nursing staff were very good but some of the doctors could be a lot better! One came to my wife & said: "have you had cancer before?"  When my wife said, "No, have I got it now?" his reply was "I can't discuss this now until you have a close member of your family with you."

Once again she was discharged from the ward to the  Ambulatory care who saw her one evening in December a couple of days later before discharging her, still with fluid on the lung and spreading into the abdomen.

Late December, she was taken by ambulance to DVH A&E at 08:30 where bloods and x-rays were done by 09:30. By 12:30 ambulance crews were being told to take new patients back out to the ambulances to hold awaiting space in A&E. Staff were tripping over equipment, each other and patients just trying to treat people. As I have already said most of the staff were very good, but working under immense pressure.

There have been thousands of new homes built in Dartford alone, let alone all the other development in the South East since this hospital was built. It just cannot cope with the volumes it is getting at the moment.