"5 hour plus wait in A&E"

I attended Whipps Cross A&E on Monday night with a severely broken toe (the toe was bent and pointing in the wrong direction) I was put in the lowest priority by the receptionist. Waited approximately 1.5 - 2 hours to see triage nurse, who

arranged an X-ray then waited approximately 3 hours to see a doctor. In total I was waited around 5 hours.

Receptionist initially told me the wait was 2 hours. When I enquired about waiting times the receptionist just said they were busy. They didn't move to make any further enquires, so no information was fed back to patents. Patients were despondent and angry so the mood was not good. Children and adults were sick in the waiting room, there was vomit on the floors and chairs. Receptionist who were not busy but did little to help and failed to get the area cleaned as a priority. In fact, the domestic came and cleaned about 1.5 hours later. Patients just sat elsewhere. This is a huge infection risk and demonstrates that Whipps Cross are not interested in infection control.

When I eventually saw the doctor I complained about the wait and the state of the department. They informed me they have nothing to do with it. I advised that they should feed this back to their consultant who could perhaps take the issue to the trust board, teh doctor basically said that they won't be doing that and all A&E's are the same. The doctor looked at my X-ray, put some tape on my toe, gave me a form for follow up and I left. The consultation took about 15 minutes. There was only 1 doctor and 1 nurse in minors that evening.

The patient experience attitude of staff was very poor. Staff seemed to think that this sort of service was acceptable.

Whipps Cross does not have a very good reputation and I can now see why. Staff attitude must change drastically in order to improve the patient experience, quality of care and to bring standards in line with other well performing hospitals in London. From my experience on Monday night the the CQC rating of inadequate is accurate.