"A&E"

My mother who has recently recovered from bowel cancer had to go to A&E in the early hours of the morning. She had server abdominal pains and constipation. Something the GP was not sorting out properly. She had faecal vomiting a few months previous due to an obstruction and she was concerned that it would happen again. The ambulance crew had to take my mother in, and the crew were fantastic and supportive, however the experian in A&E was not like that. After a long wait she was met by a doctor who was rude and seemed to not understand her worries about the cancer coming back, the faecal vomiting and not to mention the amount of pain she was in. When I trained it was forced into me that you assess and treat a patient holistically. This doctor didn’t seem to care about the issues at hand and wanted to move on to a more interesting case? The doctor said to my mother that she needed to go home and have a CT scan as an outpatient, which her GP can read the results and refer her to a specialist if needed. My mother was happy with this but was worried about the late hour and how to get home, the doctor said can you get a taxi. If he assessed my mother fully he would have realised that she needs a lot of help and not able to walk without assistance. After a delay the doctor came back and said she can stay on the Short Stay Ward until the morning, which she did. She saw another doctor before discharge and was happy to get home. The experience of this has worried my mother, she has always respected the A&E team at RSCH and has never bad mouthed them, however the way the doctor spoke and treated her she is worried to call an ambulance or go to A&E ever again as she was made to feel stupid and not worthy of a so called ‘major trauma centre’. She wants to make the point that throughout her time in A&E the nursing staff were fantastic and understanding and cannot praise them enough, may be the lead consultant needs to talk to his junior staff on how to communicate and treat patients.