"NOT THE A&E DEPARTMENT. My ..."

What I liked

NOT THE A&E DEPARTMENT. My daughter was taken to Southend A&E with a high fever and vomiting. She suffers from a condition as kidney reflux, which we informed the doctor about. Because of this we expected her to have a UTI. The hospital staff did NOT check her for this. They said that the Labs were closed (even though I know that a dip stick test could have been carried out with results in minutes by the hospital staff). Instead we was told that we could get our own urine sample from her and when asked how we was told they could provide us with a pot. My daughter is 7 months old, so you can see why we didn't find this ammusing. We was then informed we could by something from a chemist to catch her urine. We was then referred to the out of hours GP who once again was no help, and could hardly speak english. Having been sent home, we then proceeded to contact our consultant the following morning who was very suprised that a uring test wasn't carried out, and actually advised us to increase her medication, and report to the childrens ward so that a uring test could be carried out properly.

What could be improved

Listen to the patients, and when very young children are involved, refer them to the childrens ward.