"Where a homless patient get's discharged to..."

My best friend of nine years is homeless and twice in the last four weeks he has been discharged to home.

He is HIV+, has Hepatitis C and has multiple personality disorders including social anxiety, which makes it hard for him to articulate his concerns.

On both occasions, the hospital confiscated and did not return medicines prescribed to him by his GP including Diazepam, and on his last visit that these were confiscated was not even written in his notes.

On his last visit, his trainer shoes also went missing in A&E.

He wanted to go for a cigarette, which would have calmed him greatly on his second visit, but the nurse in charge vetoed this rather abruptly as my friend had not been cleared for this by the Psych team.

Although they had called them by phone to come see my friend, they had no idea when that would be and when asked to estimate the time this could take this was taken as challenging behaviour.

When I tried to give information to the Consultant in charge of medicine in A&E about a number of other recent similar admissions my friend had had with overdoses following depression, their only comment was "I think I'll pass on that."

The Consultant could not even look me in the eye.

I myself was in a considerable state of shock (I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Generalised Anxiety Disorder) and no care or consideration was shown to my obviously distressed state.

The nurse in charge of A&E seemed to be in a stressed state themself and it was clear that they either would not or could not give any reassurance with a guestimate as to whether the Psych team could be there in five minutes, an hour or five hours, given that a quick cigarette would have done so much to put my friend's mind to rest.

The security guard watching us was happy to go with us if my friend left the building to smoke, the consultant in charge of medicine was happy for this too, but the intransigent nurse in charge of A&E vetoed this and added to anxiety rather than reassured.

A&E is also partly a construction site and on the way to the X-ray department we travelled along corridors with uneven floors and dirty-looking entrances to the construction site, none of which inspired my confidence in the state of cleanliness.

I think these two experiences have been the worst hospital visits of my life.