"My daughter's experience"

I took my daughter to South Tyneside General hospital after she was suffering from symptoms similar to gallstones.  She had called 111 and they had instructed her to make her way to the nearest A&E.

We arrived at the hospital at 8:45am and were seen by the triage nurse promptly on our arrival, after that the whole experience went downhill rapidly. The triage nurse was terse and rolled their eyes when my daughter explained how she was feeling and that her pain level was an 8.

After that, she was seen by a care assistant, who took her observations , whilst they told her that she was being miserable and that she should be more positive. They told me to move to comfort her as she began to cry after their comments, but she was very nauseous and didn’t want anyone touching her. They asked my daughter for a urine sample, and while she was away, they said that I should be encouraging her more as she was far too negative and complained too much…. I begged their pardon and told them that she is normally a very sweet person and under the circumstances she could be forgiven for her, less than, sparkling conversation.

We then waited for 7 hours, with no updates and no visible movement of patients through the A&E system. The information board was 6 days out of date and no one volunteered any further information to the ever increasing patient numbers in the waiting area.  At approximately 4 pm a patient came into the waiting room in obvious distress clutching their abdominal area and crying softly. After about half an hour, with the patient in increasing visible pain, they collapsed on the floor.  Several patients rushed to help and I, a disabled person, went to the triage nurse and told  them what was happening in the waiting area.  They tutted and sighed and stood up to follow me to the patient.  However, when they reached the waiting room they shouted across the area that the patient couldn’t be on the floor and the they would need to get up, then promptly turned and went back into their office, without helping at all.

After another two hours another patient asked how long they would have to wait, as they’d already been there for 3 hours, the response was, at least 10 hours.  As we’d already been there for that amount of time we decided to stay.  Eventually we were seen after 13 hours 23 minutes of waiting time by a very rude doctor, who said that they thought my daughter had gastroenteritis but would she return tomorrow for an ultrasound to confirm. They gave her pain meds, stomach acid meds and an appointment for the following day.

We returned the following day, and were quickly see by the ultrasound team, who were very good, thorough and professional.  We then moved on to return to see the doctor from the previous day, and waited for our appointment for two hours! When we finally saw the doctor, they said that it definitely was not gallstones, and was most likely gastroenteritis, my daughter asked why was she in so much pain, and might it be the fault of another medication she was taking.  The doctor said that she certainly had a lot of questions and it seemed like she wanted there to be something more serious wrong with her.  My daughter was speechless but when I was about to complain she just asked me to leave, that the whole place had exhausted her and she just needed to go home and go to bed, so that is what we did.