"8 hr wait for test results in A+E"

My 17 year old son was sent by ambulance to Blackburn A+E from Burnley urgent care unit for a CT scan after becoming ill at home. We arrived at 00.20 and had the scan done at 01.20.

We were then sent to a cubicle in A+E to await the results.

At 03.20 I enquired as to how long we would have to wait to get the results and a nurse told us it could be up to 3 hours. At 04.30 the same nurse came and told us that they had got it wrong and that there actually was no-one to check the scan results until around 9am.

At 04.50 a doctor finally came to see us and they said the same. ( why were we not told this after the scan and given a bed on the ward at 01.20)?

The doctor said they would send my son to the ward to get some sleep and they would call me in the morning when the consultant came in and was checking the scan results so I went home.

At 10am my son called me and told me he had been discharged. I drove the 15 miles to the hospital and found him waiting outside. He told me that he had not been given a bed on the ward but had in fact spent the entire night on the trolley in the cubicle.

He is only 17 yrs old and spent the entire night surrounded by the not very pleasant sights and sounds of an A+E department along with the police and security guards , all alone.

During this 8 hour wait he was only offered one drink and a meagre ham sandwich for breakfast. At 9am they took him to a different waiting area where after nearly an hour a doctor came to see him regarding the test results. I was not contacted by the hospital at any stage as promised . They gave the important results information from a CT scan to 17 yr old who was exhausted from spending the night on a trolley in A+E and totally confused by the whole experience and not to mention his illness .

They should have contacted a parent to be in attendance at this important consultation. After all he had been through they didn't even ask him how he was getting home. I never got the chance to see the consultant and get the answers to the many questions about my sons condition. This is a very bad practice in my opinion and just made a very worrying and distressing time even more intolerable.

The cleanliness of the A+E unit needs addressing also with what looked like human hair wrapped around the wheels of the trolley my son was on and a smell of sewage was prevalent in the department.

This whole experience was very worrying and distressing for my family.