"Total Chaos"

My friend was distressed when she called meas her GP had given her a letter to take to Stoke Mandeville saying that he had spoken to the hospital and the medical team were aware of her arrival. She was to be admitted. He was of the opinion that she had a colonic bleed so she was a bit panicked as anyone would be. The GP asked if she could get someone to take her as she couldn't drive, hence her call to me. My son then dropped us off as the car park is normally so bad I couldn't risk the stress of trying to park! We got to A & E and I have never seen anything like it. We waited in the queue to give the letter to the Receptionist. One receptionist was trying to be helpfuka & pleasant, but another had no sense of urgency. Had a couple of conversations with people whilst we were waiting & she randomly picks up the phone to seemingly call someone, didn't have a conversation, put the phone down & said to my friend "so what is wrong with you?" Astounding! My friend explained and the receptionist said that she was booked in and go and wait. It turns out she was on the Triage List. If she was supposed to be admited why wasn't there someone she would be sent to who would do the paperwotk and then give her a bed where she would then wait for the medical/surgical team to come and see her? A & E was like a car crash. Not enough seats for everyone. People sitting on the floor and standing. I had to go & ask Reception what was happening twice as my friend was in pain & we had only her GP's diagnosis to go with at this point. I was worried. I collared a Doctor & asked what was happening as my friend has been told she has a colonic bleed. He said she was on the Triage List and that there were people waiting who were a lot more ill than she was - I begged to disagree as that was a sweeping statement. Anyway,, he was not going to move on his standpoint so there was very little more I could do. We waitied for about 1.5 hours and eventually she was seen by a Nurse who did her blood pressure etc. read her letter fro her GP and then asked her what the problem was! He told us he would call "people" to sort her out. We felt marginally heartened - how silly were we? We waited for about another 40 mins or so and another Nurse saw my friend and took her into a room where he just did her blood pressure and temperateure and then he had to do respiration, but there was no plug to be found in the room. What a joke. More nurses had been brought in to triage, but they had nowhere to see individuals and some people were spoken to in the corridor. I have not got enough characters to explain my full horror at the state of the A & E Dept. Cubicle A and the waiting area had cobwebs. Biggeest problem is lack of cimmunciation. No one explains what is happening and what you are waiting for and even why it might be taking so long. I believe there were come urgent cases brought in later in the evening. After 10 hrs in A & E I left.