"A&E and Paediatrics"

I was recently admitted to Paediatrics via A&E twice. I had very different experiences in them!

Generally, A&E was a bit crazy - it was so busy that ambulance beds lined the corridors and it took over 7 hours for me to be admitted to the hospital. I feel like a lack of organisation contributed to this - I was quite literally forgotten about on several occasions. I wasn't offered any food when it was decided I was to be hospitalised (which took several more hours) despite having not eaten in almost 12 hours and one doctor on A&E wanted to send me home straight away.

I was later admitted for several days, had an MRI, urine test, five blood tests and a plethora of other things, so sending me home was definitely not a good idea!

Contrastingly, the Paediatrics ward were mostly brilliant. Although it took a while to get onto the ward (I'm 16 years old, my birthday was less than a week before admission date, and so they wanted me on an adult ward... where there were no beds), the nurses were absolutely lovely.

It was a little frustrating that on my records, several nurses didn't ask for my pain level and recorded it as 0 (I was rating it a 7-8 every time I was asked, so it annoyed me that my pain was being ignored). However, the food was great, the facilities were excellent, the adolescent room was good and I felt like the nurses were taking an active role in getting me investigated and out of there.

The nurses themselves openly criticised some of the doctors, as often the doctors wouldn't complete paperwork that they were meant to or would leave jobs like taking bloods to nurses (who are busy too! ).