"Unacceptable 7 hours in childrens A&E"

We arrived 8.40 pm on sunday night with our 7 year old daughter who had been lethargic, complained of aching limbs, sore throat, and had hit a temperature of 40.2.

We were seen by the triage nurse after about 30 minutes who seemed quite dismissive of our daughters symptoms, and we then waited a further hour and a half to be seen by the doctor, during which waiting time our daughters temp increased and she vomited. The doctor was great, very good with children, our daughter really liked him as he joked with her. He told us she had tonsiltis, and that the nurses would give her a pain relief spray for her throat, then she would stay to be observed and would leave with antibiotics. So far so good. We had been seen by a doctor in just under 2 hours which was amazing. However it all went drastically downhill after that: waited half an hour for the nurse to bring the relief spray, then another hour and a half for nurse to call our daughter again for observation, during which waiting time she.vomited again and her temp was rising. Then had to wait a.further 2 hours for the doctor.to observe her again before issuing the antibiotics and discharging her.

This.whole waiting time she was incredibly uncomfortable and desperate to go home. The last straw was then waiting for 45 minutes for someone to get the antibiotics as they did not have any.in stock...(fairly standard antibiotic amoxicillin). We left at 3.15am next morning after having arrived at 8.40pm and having been seen initially by the doctor at 10.30pm night before: this extra almost 5 hour delay from initial doctor consultation to leaving was absolubtely awful and incredibly draining and stressful for a sick child who just wanted to go home, and is just unacceptable. I have never experienced anything like this before and will never go through this again. There clearly are not enough staff to be able to cope with dealing with new a and e arrivals and those of us who have been seen but are waiting to be "observed". We were quite clearly the forgotten / lost ones.