"Dreadful time on Acute Assessment Ward"

My daughter was taken to the A & E at Pinderfields on 9th November in the morning around 7.00am with acute abdominal pains, she was seen straight away in A & E and sent to the Acute Assessment Ward where she was wheeled onto the corridor for about an hour or so to wait for a bed.

When a bed did become available we thought that it wouldn't be too long before she was seen by a doctor and sent for a scan, how wrong could we have been.

She spent all day and night on that ward, granted she was given painkillers but nobody came to take her for a scan and no doctor came to check her and at this point we were worried as we thought it was very likely that she was suffering from appendicitis.

When her intravenous painkillers ran out, I went to look for a nurse who could help her as she was experiencing a great deal of pain again.

I was confronted with a couple of nurses who had 'bad attitudes' because I was simply asking them, politely, if they could help.

I understand that there is a shortage of staff and it must be very difficult but we were worried that if it was appendicitis it might rupture.

One nurse gave me a speech on how pain doesn't just start and become an emergency??

What was all that about?

The nurse also said that they were looking after her but to bear in mind that she wasn't their patient and another nurse kept telling me that emergencies were coming in and she would have to wait, yes, I understand that, but what if my daughter was now an emergency?

The following day she was seen by a doctor from the Surgery Ward who wasn't sure if it was her appendix or not and she would have a scan (which is what we had been waiting for since the day before) but she still spent the day on the ward, in tears at one point, until she was taken for a scan around 4.00pm and it was decided that it was her appendix and that she needed an op to remove it that night.

She had the op but had to have 3 bags to drain the fluid away from her abdomen.

I understand that her appendix had ruptured.

I'm shocked that it took such a long time for her to have a scan when time was definitely not on her side.

It could have been a very different story and as her mother, I feel so upset that I couldn't get things moving any faster, I was helpless.

I have to say that once on the Surgery Ward she was well looked after and the staff were brilliant but on the Acute Assessment Ward (apart from a nurse) the rest of the staff were shocking and we never want to experience anything like that again.