"Out of hours A & E at Warwick hospital."

Anything else?

My wife and I attended Warwick A & E at around 11.30pm last night (25/11/13) because of my wife 's extremely high blood pressure (215 /110) . My wife has suffered from high blood pressure for over 13 years and had visited our GP earlier in the day for some blood test results and her blood pressure was high ( 166/98) and he suggested a 24hr monitor be organised, something my wife has had on a number of occasions in the past. Later in the evening my wife decided to check her blood pressure herself and it was even higher and continued to rise over the next 2hrs to the extent that she phoned the BUPA care line who suggested she go immediately to A &E. We arrived at Warwick and explained the situation and history to the receptionist who asked us to take a seat. The department was not overly busy and we heard the receptionist comment on the phone to one of her colleagues that apart from one elderly gentleman who was in triage with breathing difficulties ( a person I might add who arrived after my wife) she only had one person waiting to see the doctor the rest were either relatives or people waiting for taxis. After some 15 minutes she came over to my wife and I and explained that she had spoken to the doctor on duty and they had said that we would have to wait between 2and a half to 3 hours and that they did not deal with hypertension and were unlikely to be able to help as my wife was already taking prescribed medicine and they would not want to interfere with our GP's presciption. At no stage were we offered triage involving even a simple blood pressure test or ECG , all we were given was an out of date telephone number for HNS Direct,which has now been replaced with the 111 service. Obviously the staff at Warwick are so badly trained that they were unaware of this. We returned to the car and drove home , finally managing to talk to a very helpful doctor at Nuneaton via the 111 service who was able to offer some practical help and re-assurance for my wife. In the light of all the critisism of the NHS following South Staffs etc , this is yet another case of a callous disregard for patients and a lack of care and understanding. All we required was re-assurance and advice and both were sadly lacking. My wife is going to our surgery this morning as her blood pressure is still 200+/ 100+. If this were our only experience of poor care from Warwick A&E it would be bad enough but my wife has been unfortunate to have to attend here three times this year, for a cut to he rfinger that required stitches and after falling from a ladder,on both occasions the service was appalling,unfortunately I do not have space to give full details here but would happily do so if required.