"A&E waiting room is small and cramped"

I visited the A&E Department yesterday with my father in law who was sent there by a doctor at Estuary View. My story is about the A&E Department and how utterly impractical it is now that changes have been made.

The waiting room is far too small and everyone is cramped together with seats right next to each other. People standing or sitting on the floor due to lack of room. I am shocked and struggling to understand how the new waiting area is effective when there are just as many patients but less room.

There was litter on the floors and packets of biscuits. Blankets laying everywhere and generally it looked and felt awful. There is very limited room for wheelchairs or in fact the chairs that are used by porters and staff to move patients from a to b.

One patient had been in the same chair for 24 hours and was given some quite distressing results in front of everyone, not even taken to a side area or a room. That is surely not good practice.

We were there for a total of 5 hours, and in that time there were still patients waiting to be seen who had arrived before us. I worry that infections and Covid is encouraged to spread more in that environment.

I cannot fault the care that my father in law received it was excellent and he was later discharged after being thoroughly examined and treated accordingly.