"My sons broken ankle at Stafford Hospital"

My son had a bad injury on the football pitch one sunday afternoon. We could see he was in terrific pain and decided to call a paramedic rather than move him.

The paramedic believed his ankle was broken and an ambulance took him to Stafford Hosp. He was actually seen quite quickly in A&E, and the guy that took us down to xray was lovely.

However, when the xray came back and was looked at by both the main doctor and the young student doctor they said it wasn't broken and he could go home. We pointed out that he couldn't put his foot to the ground without severe pain so could he have some crutches. The yound doc went to look for some but came back saying there weren't any, and anyway it would be good for him to try and put his weight on it.

Ha, ha! He would have screemed the hosp down. We eventually had to go and find him a wheel chair ourselves, as he was 16 and 6'4", so not able to be supported easily by us.

After 3 days of resting it, I noticed that the swelling seemed to be getting worse. I decided to take him to our normal hosp, Queen's at Burton, and had the foot xrayed again. It was a triage nurse who spotted that a small piece of bone had been chipped off the ankle. This was shown to a consultant who confirmed her findings and my sons ankle was put in plaster.

I was really cross that two doctors couldn't see what a nurse found. I will admit that even she said it was not easy to spot, but surely if she found it they should have? We were also cross with the way they sent us home from Stafford with no support of any kind. Burton gave him crutches.