"Waste of time---go elsewhere"

My husband came down with a flu-like illness with a fever and developed a rash. We called 111 and they advised us to go to a walk-in centre. We live in Rugby, so we ended up at St. Cross.

We stood at reception for 5-10 minutes while the receptionist finished inputting something into the computer. Once we were signed in, it took almost an hour for an assessment. My husbands temperature was 37.7. Not a super high fever, but still a fever.

They sat us back in the waiting room with the general population (most of which seemed to be there for injured limbs). So here is my poor husband....likely contagious...sat in this waiting room for 3.5 hours before we finally got called back. I'm not sure why there was such a delay. People were only being called back every 30 minutes at best. There was no urgency to see patients whatsoever.

Once we were back, my husband got maybe 5 minutes maximum of attention before they sent us on our way. How did we wait 3.5 hours if seeing patients only takes 5 minutes? He still had a fever....his throat and ears were looked at...and that was it.

Apparently it's viral, with a heat rash? My husband doesn't get heat rashes. I'm a biomedical scientist..a rapid strep takes FIVE minutes to do. Considering he had a horrible sore throat, a fever and a rash, I thought this would be a given...but, no.

So here we are a few hours later and his fever is back up to 39 and his rash has continued to spread. Hopefully none of the other patients that were in that waiting room end up with what he has since he wasn't isolated. Absolutely abysmal patient care.