"Accident and emergency"

Anything else?

My son attended A&E at 10am with severe abdominal pains and the classic symptoms of appendix problems he was sent to the walk in centre who sent him away with some antibiotics. As the pain increased he went back to A&E at 1pm they sent him to the walk-in centre again – when I joined him having made a 70 mile drive to get there. After an hour he was seen and then sent him back to A&E with another 4hr wait before being seen by a doctor when he was finally admitted and subsequently operated on for a burst appendix the following morning. The reception staff appeared indifferent to the problem [and the patients] despite being told he was in severe pain and vomiting a number of times. In fact the member of staff when he was booked in at A&E finally and he asked when he would be seen because of his discomfort he was told it would be 5 minutes [a clear lie as they were running at a 4 hour waiting time]. Had he not been in such discomfort I was giving serious consideration to taking him back the 70 miles to our local hospital where he would certainly have been seen sooner even with the travelling time. As his condition was deteriorating both he and myself went back to the reception to see if he could get assistance.The next excuse was that they couldn't contact the doctor [again I suspect that was not true]. The medical staff was excellent in his actual treatment although again it did take another 5hrs before he was finally seen by another doctor on a ward and admitted to the ward after getting past the door at A&E. I appreciate the work load on the dept. but the experience would have been much better of the reception staff where more honest and open in their interaction with patients and better trained to triage patients rather than blindly administering a waiting list. That way my son would have got the necessary pain relief at an early stage and avoided possibility of a the dangerous consequences of a burst appendix]