"Poor service for cellulitis at Warwick hospital"

We have just received the most pathetic experience from Warwick hospital in Warwickshire and I thought I would share our story with you.

My partner has suffered from recurring cellulitis in his leg over a number of years. Last week he noticed the condition was starting again and went to the doctors, started a course of antibiotics but as usual did nothing, so went back to the doctors and GP referred him yesterday to go to the hospital to undergo a new way patients like this are treated.

The GP was under the impression that my partner would be able to be referred to the hospital and be administered with an IV injection by a nurse and then sent home afterwards and they would arrange a district nurse to visit our home to administer 2-3 injections a day. This scheme was supposedly introduced by the NHS to free up beds at this time of year - however, with the "amazing" system they have in place, this is not the case - the hospital had never heard of this - so GPs are receiving completely different training to hospital staff... great!

So we sat there and waited to see a doctor from 4pm - 8pm, saw doctor who said yes it is cellulitis then wanted us to see someone else... saw someone else at 10:30pm who then said yes, severe cellulitis, would prescribe strong antibiotics and send us home - 10 minutes later comes back and says it may be a blood clot in the leg and need to stay in overnight.

Stay in overnight and in the morning say that they are no longer doing scan and he will need to dermatologist, hour later the scan is happening again. Wait until 3pm for the scan - no blood cloth (great news) wait another hour to see the dermatologist - she says it's not cellulitis even though 3 other doctors/professionals have diagnosed it, so she decides to prescribe steroid cream... to an infection...

So we have now been sent home after an horrendous 24 hours and are back to square one, with no medicine to cure the problem and a severe condition.

To me, this means that staff are insufficiently trained, GPs and hospitals do not communicate well enough and are at completely different ends of understanding and receive different training.

The fact my partner stayed in hospital overnight when there is such a high demand for beds, to be diagnosed by THREE doctors with the condition we already knew he had and then for a dermatologist to come in and say it isn't that condition and prescribe a medicine that will only make it worse is completely and utterly ridiculous.