"Disorganised and inefficient "

This review is solely intended as a constructive feedback. I am a senior consultant physician and previously worked in A&E for several years, including for 2 years at WXUH and any suggestions of my lack of understanding or knowledge of the pressures of the system etc would be irrelevant. I presented feeling extremely unwell with temperatures in the range 38.9 - 40.0, and heart rate 115-128, completely exhausted and actively shivering, massively swollen painful lymph nodes and an angry rash, unable to stand up without feeling dizzy, not passed urine for several hours. This is despite extensive attempts at symptoms management, hydration etc at home to try and avoid the need for A&E attendance. After the initial triage, which interestingly did not have any consideration for patient privacy and happened in front of everybody else sitting and possibly listening to details of my story, I was triaged to AI dept, which I thought majors would have been more appropriate, and then ended up waiting another 2 hours in the waiting area in a wheelchair before actually forcing myself into the dept. Forget about a reasonable amount of professional courtesy that we all try to consider for our colleagues in our practice, and the fact that I'm a colleague who even served at the same hospital years ago, the fact that I was left waiting in that severely unwell situation hardly able to keep myself awake with frequent shivers etc for 2 hours in a wheelchair is obviously a dangerous practice. After a quick 2 minute chat with the team, I was told what the plan will be but then was left another 2-3 hours in the corridor of the dept in my wheelchair before eventually my wife, herself a senior NHS nurse, attracted their attention to me. ECG confirmed a rate of 128, which probably had been ongoing for several hours, temperature still 40', and very unwell. I was cannulated at this point but it took another 1-2 hours for any treatment to be ordered and then delivered. From this point, the registrar and nurses were kindly keeping me informed on the progress and blood resluts as they came in, which I really appreciate. By early morning after treatment I had relatively improved and was discharged. Unfortunately the next day I was in the same cycle of symptoms and despite GP's strong advice, decided against attending A&E again.

A lot of what I mentioned above would have been very simple steps to address within an organised well run system. To me the whole process from triage of an unwell patient, and the inexplicable long long gaps between doing anything actually useful i.e getting the treatment through is completely unacceptable, and this is coming from someone who knows all the ins and outs of A&E practice. My wife and I have both proudly served the NHS and this was an overall disappointing experience the one time we really needed to use the service.