"A & E visit 23:45 Sunday 11.03.18"

We visited the A&E department with my 20 year old son who was suffering accurate abdominal pain.

We checked in easily and we asked for an approximate time that it would take but the lady on the reception said it was very busy and couldn’t give any estimated time.

Surprisingly the waiting area wasn’t actually too full and only took 45 minutes for my son to be seen by the triage nurse.

Appreciate the whole point of triage is to assess and categorise the patients and as a visitor it is going to appear very difficult to evaluate other patients. However, patients in wheelchairs were able to walk when they needed to leave for ciigarette breaks and other patient were able to talk and joke with fri nds ans relatives. But the few patients who were clearly in pain and discomfort were had not been assessed as any more urgent and it appeared that the triage assessment wasn’t working as it seemed to be in an order of arrival was what was being adopted at best.

I know this is a problem for A&E but it looked like there were a lot of patients who had visited A&E who should have been assessed by triage and sent away and referred to other services the next day.

My son was seen by triiage and acknowledged that he was in considerable pain and given a buscopan injection by the triage nurse and asked to take a urine sample to give to the doctor when he was called.

We then waited a further 3 3/4 hours for my son to be called by a doctor who carried out a brief examination and had the urine sample tested. He was unable to offer any diagnosis of the problem or any recommended medication to ease the pain and asked my son what he would like to do? We left the A&E department at around 5am and felt the whole experience was very poor and actually came away with my son still in accute abdominal pain as we entered the department some 5 hours earlier with no outcome.

During the period we and the rest of the patients waiting had to endure an aggressive drunk who the staff were very friendly with but when the patients complained about him the staff brushed it aside and just asked him to go and sit down. I asked about securiy and eventually 2 security guards arrived had a chat with him and asked him to be good and were then happy to leave him to sit with the patients to be abusive and aggressive but were persuaded to return and then got one of the medical team to talk to him and eventually he left the A&E department and stopped intimidating the patients and their friends and family.

I cannot believe that the hospital doesn’t have all round better procedures for the A&E department, both in patient assessment and ensuring the safety and well-being of the patients, friends and family whilst in the A&E department.

I fully appreciate that the department & the NHS are under huge strain and resources cannot cope but tfrom this experience there we’re areas that could be massively improved with the existing resources to make the experience better and safer.