"I took my 2 year old son in to ..."

What I liked

I took my 2 year old son in to have a head wound treated. Firstly, we were ignored by the nurse at reception whilst she did her paperwork, only to find out later that she hadn't even taken down my son's name correctly. After a 15 minute wait we were seen by a nice nurse who proceeded to take my son's temperature, pulse and clean his wound with an antiseptic wipe. She informed us that he would need a couple of butterfly stitches. We were then told to go and wait for the doctor to see us. There were approximately 8 people already waiting. Over an hour later, we were still waiting; my son was obviously tired and hungry. When asked how much longer it would be the nurse replied that there were still a few people ahead of us. I would have though that the staff would have realised that a 2 year old with a head wound wouldn't be able to wait 2 hours to see a doctor. In the end we had to leave without seeing one. I don't understand why a nurse, who is trained to provide general first aid, can't apply a butterfly stitch on a wound. I am disgusted that we had to wait for so long.

What could be improved

Surely nurses are trained to administer first aid. She could have applied the stitch herself. I would have thought there would be some sort of triage where head wounds were seen as more of a priority. Staff could have put the average waiting time on the whiteboard to keep their patients informed.