"A & E"

My dad recently had an accident at work where he smashed his hand up and seriously damaged the ligaments & broke two fingers in it.

He initially went to a local hospital in Cambridge where they scanned and xray his hand and advised that surgery was necessary.

However as it was an accident at work he needed to get back to MK for the treatment due to a driver come and pick him up along with his truck.

Fair enough it was his decision to come back to MK for the surgery due to being more local to home.

However Cambridge hospital had called ahead to MK General that included scans that they had taken along with advising that a surgeon would need to be called.

When we got him to MK A&E with a heavily bandaged hand and blood seeping through, we sat in the waiting room for two hours before he was seen by the nurse, who asked him if he wanted pain killers and that also he would be seen rather quickly due to the injury.

1.5hrs later we are still sat in the waiting room to be called and no painkillers were given to him even though he was in a lot of pain. Finally after 3.5hrs of waiting he was called in to a cubical where a junior doctor walked in to assess the damage.

The doctor asked again if he was in pain which he replied yes and promised to get painkillers.

We were all a bit curious as to why a Junior Doctor or any staff as it goes should be walking around in a hospital with their bag on their shoulder?

Funny enough I had been up in A&E only days before and I noticed the same Doctor walking around with a bag?

We wasn't sure whether the doctor had just started work or was on her their home.

I must say it looked completely sloppy and surely must be a risk to health? anyway finally sitting around again wondering what was happening it seems that the doctor with the bag had put his files in the wrong tray so no one was dealing with it, so more time wasted. 5 hours to finally get him some pain relief.

Would it not make sense that once a patient goes in to a cubical to be seen that they are met by the doctor along with a nurse who carries out the necessary treatments or pain relief rather than a doctor coming in, putting notes in a tray for then another 2hr wait for a nurse to come along to carryout the necessary, and the doctor to return back after this with an update as to whether he can go for surgery the same day or have to stay in a night and be put on the following days list? There seems to be a lot of time wasting going on and the process of seeing a patient and treating them is clogging up the next patient who is having to sit in a waiting room for hours!

From start to finish it took 5 hrs to get pain relief and get information to finally getting on a ward. Communication and team work is seriously lacking here.