"A&E 23/24 June 2013 Psychiatric Problems"

Anything else?

We visited A&E at 11.30pm on Sunday 23rd June 2013 with our 18 year old daughter who had self harmed and had had a psychotic attack having a history of mental health issues. Luckily fairly quiet at this time on a Sunday evening but had to wait in recepton for an extended time with my daughter obviously creating a bit of a scene and in a lot of distress and we were having to restrain her. We needed to have been able to take to a quieter safer room where we could have felt safer with my daughter while waiting for her assessment. After the primary assessment she was given a bed in a cubicle and simply left there. Nobody came to talk to us or tell us what was happenning, nobody seemed to be responsible for us. After more than two hours I asked a nurse if someone could dresss my daughters wounds as they were painful and a mess. It was really quiet in this area and staff seemed to be in groups talking together but not telling us what was going on.I had to repeat the request for a nurse to dress my daughters wounds which they then did and I took this opportunity to ask what the plan was. Shortly after this a doctor came and talked to my daughter about her psychiatric problems and history and left saying that a psychiatrist would visit my daughter in the morning and she was given a bed overnight. This was now 4.30 in the morning. At every point during the 5 hours that we were there we were never updated.