"I took my 7 year old son to the ..."

What could be improved

I took my 7 year old son to the drop in out of hours clinic at Withington Hospital in WEst didsbury on 18/04/08 on the advice of a pharmacist. We arrived at the hospital at 8.43 pm only to be told by the receptionist that nobody would be able to see us because they were closing at 9pm and 15 mins wasn't enough time to put our details on the system and check him over. After i explained that i had come to seek advice for my son who was in a lot of discomfort, she called two nurses who spent 10 minutes explaining to me why they would not be able to see my son. I was very disappointed with their unhelpful attitude towards us. I have worked in many different industries and i am baffled as to why an out of hours emergency unit that is open until 9 pm should be turning away patients (especially a vulnerable child) at a quater to 9. I was very disappointed and shocked by these nurses' reluctance to fulfil their duty of care for my son. there was nobody else waiting or being treated at that time and in fact the doors had already been locked when we arrived there. the night watchman had to let us in. in the end i took my son to the MRI A&E. It took the receptionist 2 mins to check our details (as they were already on their system anyway). we were then directed to their out of hours walk in clinic where after a 10 mins wait we saw a very competent doctor who diagnosed impetigo. Were these nurses really justified in turning my son away at 15 mins to 9, spending 10 mins explaining their actions? Surley, if everybody had just done their job when they were supposed to we would have been out of there at 5 past 9 at the latest. Is it too much to expect of nurses to work a few minutes extra to look after a patient? To me it seemed that they were simply done with their day's work and could not be bothered to look at him. Shame on them. I don't expect to be that badly treated by a shop assistant let alone someone in the "caring" profession. What a bad example for their profession these women set last night!