"Problems with discharge letter"

I don't like complaining but I feel that without speaking up this process may not be changed.

My partner was admitted via A&E to the General Medicine ward at Glasgow Royal Infirmary (Ward 65) with a hernia. He was admitted on the Thursday, then discharged, then subsequently re-admitted, then discharged again on the Saturday night. After a scan, it was determined that his hernia was not strangulated, and arrangements were made for my partner to be discharged with laxatives. On the Saturday night, I arrived for visiting and found my partner sitting on his bed, fully-clothed, ready to leave. This was around seven pm on the Saturday night. The doctor popped her head around my partner's door and advised that she would arrange a discharge letter for my partner and a supply of laxatives for him and the promise of an out-patient appointment in six to eight weeks.

Fifteen minutes later, a nurse advised that my partner could now be discharged, and attempted to print off his discharge letter. She was unable to do this, and asked for advice from her colleagues, none of whom seemed able to provide her with clear instructions for printing off the discharge letter. After some time, my partner was becoming increasingly so, and we asked if we could leave without the discharge letter. We were informed that hospital policy was that a patient could not be discharged with medication without a discharge letter. I asked if the discharge letter could perhaps be emailed to us, but was advised that a physical copy of the letter of the letter was necessary prior to my partner's being discharged. After fifty minutes of trying to print the letter off, with the collaborative effort of the team in the nursing station, a print out was obtained and my partner was finally able to get home. 

My issue is this. What would have happened had the nursing staff been unable to print off a copy of the letter? At what point would common sense have prevailed and my partner been allowed to leave? Would my partner have been required to stay in hiospital for another night simply because someone was unable to print off a copy of his discharge letter? During my partner's stay in the ward, we were aware of one individual who left the hospital and had a relative return to the hospital to collect their discharge letter and medication as it proved so difficult to provide them with this at the point of discharge. We would have done the same, but the cost of hospital parking is prohibitive, and we live a distance from the hospital. The irony is that the staff were able to read the discharge letter on their screen, so were fully aware that my partner should be receiving the medication prescribed to him - the issue was that they could not provide him with the medication without a physical copy of the letter. 

My suspicion is that the printer the nurses were trying to print the letter from was never connected to a printer, and why should a charge nurse be expected to have the IT knowledge to troubleshoot these problems for his or herself? I also didn't want to stand over the nurse while she attempted to print the letter, as I didn't want her to become any more flustered than she already was.

The medication that my partner was being prescribed was a laxative. To my knowledge, there is practically no risk of harmful overdose from this medication. Surely common sense could have prevailed and my partner allowed to leave the hospital with his medication instead of having to wait for ninety minutes while the various attempts at printed were played out?