"UTC is not a good place to be"

My daughter sustained a head injury - concussion - and having dialled 111 we were told to go to A&E to have her looked at.

We went to the UTC centre at St Peters - 21:00 on Friday night, thinking that this was the right place, triage for A&E...not so? it not clear whether one should go to A&E or UTC...

Firstly the UTC building is poorly build and unclean. a temporary building tacked onto an old single storey building.

There was fast food wrapping, coffee cups & tissues in various places, drink spilt on the floor - very poor. Bear in mind the unit was not busy - this mess was not due to immediate recent activity. The inner doors are blank wood, no finish - how are these to be cleaned properly?

There is a missing chair on one set Signage is poor. Ambience is uninviting.

In the arrival waiting area the door is auto.

There was a person in a wheel chair by the door - the only place for them wait in a wheel chair. Every time the door opened the got a blast of cold air!

The triage room is glass walled - weird - so you can see what is going on in there! I'm a bit squeamish. What about patient privacy?

With the triage kit in the room where it was the door didn't' open properly.

The nurse looked totally uninterested and hardly spoke to us.

So we got triaged and sent to the waiting room. We waited, and waited, with no indication of how long the wait was going to be.

We saw 3 children get priorities above us - we questioned this as my daughter had a head injury - the receptionist could only say we were theoretically next on the list...and there was only 2 doctors on duty...very poor experience.