A friend's father was ambulanced in on Friday night arriving about 1845. He was then left in a corridor on the ambulance trolley as there were no cubicles available in A&E (in a supposed billion-£ hospital). Eventually he was decanted into a wheel chair, still in the corridor, so that the ambulance crew could actually return to their work.
After arriving at about 1845, no one updated his wife until 2200. We were left sitting in the brand new, cold, draughty, uncomfortable waiting room for over three hours with no work at all. We were advised that once the doctor had seen my friend's father they would contact us, so it appears a doctor didn't see him for several hours, despite being brought in an ambulance, having a history of heart problems and other ongoing issues.
There were other families in the waiting room in exactly the same position, and one gentleman with muscular dystrophy was kept in the cold and draughty waiting room - his parents had covered with blankets - for over three hours.
This is a billion-£ hospital.
Then this morning when we went to collect my friend's father, of the dozens of staff members were asked no one know where we were to go. This included the front desk.
Eventually a porter showed us where to go, an area we would have been unable to access anyway due to controlled access. There was no signage to indicate the route to the particular ward. When we finally found the patient no one had been in to see him since the previous night when admitted, used urine tubs had not been collected, and when we asked for a chair to take him to the door we were told that would probably take ages.
All in all absolutely appalling service from the supposed future of health care.
- A&E waiting room uncomfortable and cold
- Clearly not enough capacity to copy with demand
- Shortfall of staff (£ 1 bn would pay for millions of doctor/nurse hours)
- Utterly inappropriate directional guidance (on Friday night the receptionists in A&E were directing employee with reference to the bike shed, which was actually the mostly brightly lit and visible thing in the area - you get signs with light, these days).
- No one in the actual hospital can tell you were anything is, in my experience.
- Lack of chairs or porters in the wards
It is actually unbelievable that we asked to entrust our lives to an organisation so incompetent that it cannot provide appropriate resources to meet demand, hasn't trained staff adequately and can't provide adequate directional guidance for the biggest hospital in the country.
Shambolic implementation that may be endangering people's lives - who is accountable for this?
"Appalling service from the supposed future of health care"
About: Queen Elizabeth University Hospital Glasgow Queen Elizabeth University Hospital Glasgow Glasgow G51 4TF
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