"Cheltenham General Hospital A & E"

I want to make two points about our visit to Cheltenham General Hospital A and E: 1. I took my son aged 19 years to Cheltenham General A & E around 6am on a Saturday in May 2014 because he was unwell. He had seen his GP the previous day with an emergency appointment for tonsillitis/glandular fever and been given medication and told to go back if he got worse. His GP said he was a borderline case for hospital admission. Even the glands in his head, yes, head were swollen. However during the night he did get worse and being the weekend we went to Cheltenham General A and E. The nurse examined him and said that he should go home and give the medication time to work. I found out a week later that the nurse had recorded onto his notes that he had "mild tonsillitis." I want to say that had I know that the diagnosis was "mild tonsillitis" and it was a correct diagnosis then I wouldn't have even been at A and E! Mother's instinct. I knew that he was really poorly. We decided to go with what the nurse had said but the following morning he was worse. He was hallucinating from dehydration and was starting to have breathing difficulties so we drove him to a different Hospital as we didn't want to see the same nurse again at Cheltenham General where he was diagnosed with glandular fever and a nasty case of glandular fever at that. A doctor came down from the ENT ward and said "that's not mild tonsillitis" and he was quickly put on a drip (NICE guidelines), admitted onto the ENT ward where the nurses pushed the fluids into him and he had morphine for the pain. His glandular fever was confirmed. 24 hours later he was much improved and coherent and able to go home to rest. Thank you Gloucester Royal. To the nurse at Cheltenham General my message is - you got it wrong. 2. The nurse in A and E at Cheltenham General lacked any of the 6 C's that nurses are supposed to have. The nurse was in such a bad mood and immediately told us off saying that we should have contacted 111 and seen a doctor. The nurse stayed in the bad mood for most of the consultation. Unfortunately I am one of the 25% who did not understand what the procedures were as I had not needed to use 111 before. I did say sorry and said that we would go to the doctor next door but the nurse said that they would see us as the doctor was out on visits. There is no need to treat us in such a manner. It was almost as though we were an inconvenience as there were no other patients waiting. 3. As a result of this experience my son does not want to go to Cheltenham A and E if he needed to and I have to say that I agree with him. This is such a shame because we have had good experiences on several of the wards at the hospital.