"Saturday afternoon in A&E"

I visited the Emergency department with my partner as advised by the NHS Direct service. He was suffering with an abscess on his tooth which despite being prescribed antibiotics by his dentist the day previously, had swollen to three times the size. Neither of us realised how dangerous an abscess can be until being told on the phone. We used the check in service which was quick and easy (once you realised where on screen to press to best select) and he was literally seen within minutes by the nurse. He was prioritised due to the seriousness and was found to have a high temperature, fever and irregular heart beat. He was seen by the nurse initially and then two or three times by the doctor while they decided what best to do and whether he needed to see a specialist (who happened to already be in the department luckily). In total I think we were in there just under two hours but it didn't feel like we were waiting around idle for long. despite quite a full waiting room they seemed to move people in and out fairly quickly. They gave him a secondary prescription for another anti-biotic and told us about signs to watch out for and to come back again should he experience these. My only criticism is that they put a brand name of a drug on the prescription, which I'm sure normally wouldn't be a problem, however, due to a manufacturing issue, we visited 4 different pharmacies, being told no-one had any, before an independent pharmacy (not Boots or Lloyds) told us that they had the drug but it was named something else. He explained that often the doctors give the brand name for ease which then causes problems when prescribing, as we discovered! Very grateful to the staff at the hospital for taking such good (swift) care of him.