"Waiting in a corridor for admission to A&E"

At the end of December my 85 year old Mother-in-law was taken by ambulance to A&E at Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral suffering from severe breathing problems.

When we arrived she was placed in a queue in the corridor that circles around the A&E department along with approx 10 other patients who had all come in by ambulance. It was explained to us that this was a new system and all patients would be seen first by a staff nurse and then prioritised to which bay they will go to.

There was only one nurse to assess all the patients and although she worked hard and diligently the system was very slow. My mother-in-law was quite distressed at waiting in a corridor and other patients in the queue also seemed upset (the lady behind us in the queue had no family with her and was crying and saying she had pain in her arm and although the ambulance man was very attentive she was still upset).

Whist we were waiting, all the ambulance staff with the patients had to also wait to “hand over” their patients to the nurse and this seemed a waste of their time as they could have been getting the ambulances ready to go back on the road.

We had previously been admitted through A&E in early November and at that time the ambulance staff had taken my Mother-in-law straight to a bay and “handed over” straight away to a hospital staff member. The system at that time was much smoother and appeared to be not as much of a time waste to the staff involved. The new system appears to waste ambulance staff time and also it is very distressing for patients to be waiting in a queue in a corridor.