"Horrific Visit to A & E"

I can’t even begin to describe the awfulness of the department on Sunday 31st December. There were trolleys and beds everywhere, elderly people half falling out of beds or pinned in to them via a wall. There was no provision to help with toilet ing of patients waiting on trolleys for 5 to 6 hours and more.

Disppaointinglh the automatic door to the outside used by ambulance staff was broken and every time someone entered it remained wide open bringing in billowing cold air. I heard someone say it had been broken for 3 months!

Why hadn’t it been fixed?. It required busy staff to manually force the door shut about once every minute!

My elderly relative was falling off his trolley and couldn’t breathe as he wasn’t propped up.i asked for another pillow and was told they had run out. I later asked for a blanket as he was cold mostly because the door was open for about 20 minutes. There were no spare blankets. He was offered a drink but he has MND and can’t have drinks unless thickened. He was offered a sandwich even though he needed food puréeing . When this was explained I was given a yoghurt with lumps in it which I had to pick out and feed him with a plastic spoon I had with me. Relatives had to stand for hours and hours at a time as there were no seats and were constantly squashed and knocked by trolleys coming down the corridor. To add insult to injury - when trying to leave and pay for parking - the sign made clear - the machine didn’t accept any of the new banks notes (£5 and £10) but did accept the old £1 coins. There was no provison to pay by card or phone (which there is at other hospitsls) so basically you need to carry large amounts of silver coins with you even when your u have come unexpectedly to A&E - why haven’t the machines been updated??? This is nothing to do with medical crisis - Just poor administration. I could go on but I am too tired!! I am usually optimistic and support public services and their difficulties but this is on a differmrt scale of poor.