"Waste of time"

I attended minor injuries about 3 weeks ago as I had three abscesses, one under my right armpit which still remains and two on my my pubis.

I went after work on a Monday and arrived at approximately 5.30pm.

On entering the receptionist took my details but said she wasn’t sure if they could help me but didn’t explain why. I sat for an hour to be called in by a nurse.

I explained my situation to be told there was nothing she could do as there was no doctor on duty until the end of the week!

I explained it was only in relation to abscesses and surely a nurse could treat this even just antibiotics. She said she couldn’t do anything and never even looked at them and merely took my temperature and blood pressure!

I asked if she could put a dressing on the ones on my vagina as my clothing was rubbing and they were extremely sore but she suggested I try Boots Chemist!

She advised me to ring 111 who would get an appointment at my GP for me the following day.

This was a lie as when I got home I rang them and they told me they cannot do that.

They referred me to the out of hours service who rang me 3 hours later at 9.40pm.

After a brief chat they said they would get Wharfedale Hospital out of hours service to contact me and I could attend that night!

I explained I had already been to minor injuries earlier but was told this was a separate department but they couldn’t understand why they hadn’t referred me there directly after being unable to deal with me.

When the out of hours rang 10 minutes later it was too late for me as all appointments had been taken and they would be closing shortly.

They suggested I go to Airedale in keighley or lexicon house at seacroft but bearing in mind it was nearly 10.00pm I declined. The following day which was a Tuesday I tried to get an appointment to no avail and none was available for Wednesday.

I attended the walk in clinic on the Thursday and saw the gp who on reading the notes was shocked to see how little minor injuries had done and that they had not even looked at my abscesses let alone dress them.

By this time one on my pubis had burst so that afternoon I attended the local nurse who cleaned it and dressed it and gave me some pads.

She also was shocked at what little or no treatment I had received at otley and could it believe they hadn’t even dressed them! She gave me replacement dressings for the ones she applied and suggested I make a complaint!

The dressing I had been wearing to see my GP and the nurse had been one my husband and I created from tissue and plasters!

I despair of this place and wonder why they are there as they do little or nothing at all except send you to Leeds or Bradford A&E.

They even suggested I go there but to me an abscess is neither an accident or emergency and certainly not something to clog an emergency system with.

It is clearly a MINOR

INJURY So why are otley not dealing with them?!