Woman’s shock during Derry A&E visit as she brands NHS 'inhumane, broken'
A Limavady woman has branded the health service ‘broken’ and ‘inhumane’ after witnessing the ‘awful’ conditions at Altnagelvin Hospital’s Accident & Emergency department while attending with her elderly father.
The woman spoke of a room ‘filled to the gills with very poorly people’ and exhausted staff trying to do their best in extreme circumstances. She also described how she burst into tears after her elderly father was told there was no bed for him to sleep in, only chairs.
Responding, a Western Trust spokesperson said they were “acutely aware of the continuing challenges and extreme pressures” across both of its acute hospital sites.
The woman said that her 80 year old father had had a series of mini strokes on December 27, and at that time the family waited three hours on the ambulance ‘but it never came’.
“We made the decision to drive my dad up to the hospital and I rang 999 to cancel the ambulance. The operator who I spoke to cancel it said the ambulance was hours away from coming anyhow.”
On that occasion, her father was admitted for five days and the woman said they met "fantastic nurses, doctors, consultants and support staff who are quite simply thin on the ground and rushed completely off their feet”.
They then returned to A&E on Monday last on the advice of a 'Stroke Nurse' who told them to do so 'a matter of urgency', after her father complained of losing the vision in one eye.
"Myself and my aunt drove him up to A&E and I had him checked in with the reception desk by 12pm. About an hour later he was seen by the Triage nurse…. We were not seen by anyone until 9pm Monday night where he was assessed by a doctor and taken for a CT Scan.
"In between times we met so many other poor people who had been waiting for hours and hours to be seen. The gentleman beside me had hurt his leg with a chainsaw and was wounded and he waited seven hours before he was seen.
"The room was filled to the gills with very poorly people the numbers never decreased. Everyone was complaining about how long they had been there. I saw one elderly gentleman and I saw him literally crying to get home.”
"His daughter was so distressed and had a real job keeping him sitting because she knew that if she took him home they would have to start the process of getting him seen all again the next day.”
The woman said the A&E wait was excruciatingly painful’ for her father, who suffers from sciatica.
After the CT Scan, she said, they were told they would have to wait for the results as the scan was being assessed in Belfast.
"At this point I was past myself and wanted to go home to my young family but my dad was so worried about losing his sight that he asked me to stay for the results.
"We got the results at 11pm-ish and were told they were normal but the doctor said that the medical team wanted to talk to him. So we stayed and sat again in the overcrowded A&E room.
"I asked a few times a few different nurses how long it would be for the medical team to see my dad and explained he had been there more or less all day but no one could give me a definitive answer.
"To add, there is no cafe, food vending machine nearby, only a hot drink machine and a fizzy drink and water one. I could not take my dad for something to eat in case we missed his name being called, and as a result he ate absolutely nothing for the entire time we were in the A&E waiting room.”
At 2am they were told the scan was clear but her father was advised to stay and let a consultant see him at 8am.
"We asked where he would sleep. She said that the 'bed situation is not great' but he could sleep on the chairs in the corridor. We said that he was 80, we had waited for 15 hours now and he had a tear in the neck which caused his mini strokes but she explained that the bed situation was up to the Head Nurse. I burst out crying. He was so frail and was being asked to sleep on three chairs, one of which was broken in a cold corridor.
"Another nurse who came to take his bloods at 3am saw me cry and she was able to arrange for him to be admitted to the Stroke Ward where we left him at 4.30am Tuesday morning.”
The woman said she was shocked at the “poor provisions”, the sheer numbers “waiting in pain to be seen”, and the “exhausted and few staff for huge amounts of patients”.
"Sleeping on a chair is not patient care for an 80 year old poorly man who sat all day,” she said, adding:
“My question is, if we are part of the UK why do we not have the NHS 111 call where we can be given a time slot to see a medical professional?
"Why should elderly people who have, very often worked their whole lives, have to consider going private despite paying taxes?
“The system is broken. It is not fit for purpose. Whilst talking to many others there we asked each other: who cares about this awful inhumane system? Who can we complain to to help our loved ones? Who is ultimately responsible?”
A spokesperson for the Western Trust said: “We are acutely aware of the continuing challenges and extreme pressures not just in our Emergency Departments but across both of our acute hospital sites with full escalation of beds on all wards and departments. Pressures are not unique to the Western Trust area and are being experienced across Northern Ireland. Unfortunately due to these extreme pressures patients waiting for admission to a ward are having to wait longer in our Emergency Departments than we would like and we apologise for this.
“We want to reassure the public that we aim to provide safe and effective care to all patients and wish to thank our staff for the excellent care they provide to our patients under difficult circumstances.”
The spokesperson said it recognised that a positive experience ‘is not something that everyone will have and for that we sincerely apologise’, and advised that complaints can be raised with the Nurse in Charge/Department Manager or through the Trust's Patients' Advocate Office on (028) 7161 1226.