"Nothing. The staff were rude, ..."

What I liked

Nothing. The staff were rude, uninterested, unhelpful & I may as well not have bothered going! The waiting times were too long & I wasn't listened to which resulted in them missing a serious illness which could have had dire consequences. Dreadful place and I would never choose to go back there for anything unless it was absolutely necessary.

What could be improved

My little boy was referred to the Children's A&E at this hospital by our GP. Considering they were expecting us and my child was in my opinion very poorly the waiting time was ridiculous - over 90 mins. When we were seen the doctors gave him a chest xray, they took a wee sample then said it was a urine infection so we were sent home with antibiotics. The next day his condition was worse & he was screaming with chest pains so we returned to A&E and explained about our visit the day before. The nurse had to ring the doctor we had seen to come and see us again & basically had to argue with her to come & do it! After another 45 min wait she eventually came down & told me it was a virus. So I asked for a second opinion so the registrar came down & told me after looking at the chest xray from the day before it was a chest infection & sent us home with a new set of antibiotics! I was amazed that one day they could tell me his chest was clear then after looking again at THE SAME xray they deicided he did have an infection after all. I asked them to admit my son as I wasn't happy with his condition, but they refused. I felt that they weren't interested, they didn't take my concerns seriously & they just shoved antibiotics at me to get me out of the door. As it happens my son had pneumonia which they FAILED to diagnose. His condition worsened and we had to take him back to hospital again, however we didn't want to go back there so we went to LGI instead. I couldn't belive the difference in care we receieved there considering both hospitals are part of the same trust. My son was admitted straight away and they got straight on with doing some tests to find out what was wrong. Aside from the disgusting level of care at St James we also found the place to be dirty & shabby. I had to ask the doctors to wash their hands and there was crusty dried up food stuck to the chairs in the waiting room. Inside the A&E wasn't much better, it was smelly and just looked generally grubby.

Anything else?

I am very annoyed that they failed to pick up on what was wrong with my son and I am considering making a formal complaint. I dread to think what could have happended if I hadn't taken him to LGI when I did.........