"Wife's visit to A&E"

My wife was taken to A&E by Ambulance on Saturday evening complaining of a pain in her side. After 3 hours in A&E and various tests she was diagnosed with severe constipation. Both my wife and I were very dubious about this diagnosis, but she was sent home with some laxative and pain killers.

On the following Monday she was displaying what appeared to be severe bruising around the original site of the pain except that it had spread around her lower front. She had an appointment to see her own doctor on the Tuesday who sent her directly to A&E again as it looked like internal bleeding. A&E was absolutely packed, which I assume is partly because of the inability to see one's own doctor in less than 2 weeks and therefore people tend to go directly to A&E rather than wait 2 weeks. We then spent around 8 hours there prior to a decision being made that she had a haematoma and that she should stay in over night until her Hb level returned to normal.

It was very clear that the staff were very busy but my main complaint was the lack of information about what was being done. Several times I went to enquire about the status of my wife and was told that certain things would happen, but they didn't and on more than one occasion when we finally did see someone they said they would get back to us shortly, but we never saw them again.

Having originally checked in, after 1 hour, someone called her to take some blood. She was then told to go back in the waiting room and about 15 minutes later she was called again to take some blood until we said she had already done so. This may have been a "one off" oversight, but it didn't give us any confidence in the system that things were under control.

As I mentioned I understand the pressure that the staff are under, but just by giving some information such as realistic time scales that are involved in the various procedures would help to give patients some confidence that things are happening, albeit slowly, under the pressures the staff are working. The staff all behaved professionally, but never seemed to offer any sympathy to patients.

Not a very pleasant experience overall.