"Not as smooth an experience as it could be"

Friday evening in A&E with a lacerated hand after slipping with a belt sander, cut and abraded to the point of seeing a tendon, plenty of blood, pain and nausea. A neighbour drove me to the hosp'. First port of call, reception. Receptionist behind bullet proof screen who wants to know my life history, a multitude of pointless questions follow a few about identifying me on their database. Never mind being able to sit down or being seen by a nurse first it's far more important to have my partner's, grandmother's dog's name. Well it felt like that was how important the questions were. Then a nice long wait sat in a tiny little waiting room with chairs placed so you have to tread on toes to get to a seat in the centre of a row. About an hour after arriving a nurse looked at my hand, couldn't stop the bleeding and put a temp' dressing on until they could arrange for a Senior Nurse Practitioner to look at it. Good job, also took more info to save the SNP time. SNP was good. Felt the wound was more serious than they could sort out and asked for a consultant to look at it. The SNP re-dressed the wound with and alginate dressing and I waited for the consultant. Eventually the consultant had a look. Asked a lot of questions that the first nurse had asked and written down in the notes, looked at the wound and decided they didn't know what to do, apart from take a photo for their collection. A waste of time because the wound was bleeding so fast it was obscured by blood immediately I took the swab away. Yes I was recruited for this photo-op, well I wasn't doing anything else at the time was I. Except bleeding of course. The consultant's decision in the end? Call a friend, in this case the boss I presume, and describe things over the phone. I had great difficulty understanding what the consultant was saying, and this is not the first consultant I've seen in this hospital that can hardly speak English, but their real success was in re-dressing my wound. 'I do good clean and dress' Oh yeah? A dry swab wrapped in a bandage. And back to the waiting room. Eventually I was told I'd have to be seen in the Hand Trauma Clinic on Monday. Do not eat or drink after 6am on that day. I was given anti-biotics to take away and the wound dressed again. Only this time the dry swab had glued itself to the wound, getting it off aggravated the bleeding, making it a pig to dress. Thank you doctor. Of course I never did get seen on the Monday, that's still to be sorted. When I contacted the hosp' the response was 'you're not on any list', 'why did A&E say not to eat?' Thanks to the member of staff in the appointments hub, who was a real star, eventually something might happen. But to say communication overall is poor would be generous. So I won't.