"Concerns Around Response and Discharge Delays"

My son had a motorbike accident one recent Saturday and was taken in by sports medic ambulances following his crash. And that experience was extremely traumatic in itself because they were following a head injury and being knocked out and confused. They were going to just move him off the track and pull his helmet off. And that was extremely scary. The little knowledge that I have was that they shouldn't have done that.

When we come into A&E, there was nine ambulances ahead of us and there's many in behind. And the sports medics didn't seem to know that they could go in. He was also told that he would be discharged. He was going to sign himself out, but he was told he would be discharged pre-12 o'clock on the following Sunday. As we sat there, it got to around 3 and there was no sign of medication. They want us to go downstairs to pharmacy and we're still waiting on doctor's letters even before we can leave here.  So the wait to be discharged while there's another major trauma waiting on this bed is ridiculous.

The emergency dept needs support and they need to get some things happening a bit quicker so that there's a turnaround that's a bit slicker. This is part of the major delays in the whole service, the discharge and the admissions. And this is really, really, really slow and slowing up some poor person in pain in A&E to get into this ward. There are many lessons that I fear will be repeated again and again as the NHS is struggling to meet basic care needs and inefficiency is slowing things that need more effectively trained staffing.