Accident and Emergency

I had to spend a substantial amount of my weekend in casualty with my youngest daughter (2). We feared she had done something stupid and needed an x-ray to confirm or otherwise. Having not been to a hospital for years I have now had to go twice in three months with different children. I find them the most frustrating service imaginable.

I accept that hospital staff do a fantastic job but I will never understand why we had to wait 2 hours to be seen by a Doctor. We arrived, the triage nurse tells us that we need to see a doctor and he will tell us we need an x-ray. We waited an hour and fifteen minutes to see the Doctor who told us (guess what?) that we needed an x-ray. We had the x-ray done in fifteen minutes and the staff told us there was nothing wrong. We then had to wait another forty five minutes to see the Doctor again who told us there was nothing wrong. It seems the health service is divided into those who know what to say but do not have the power to tell you and those who have both the power and the knowledge. Why can't the triage nurse send my daughter for an x-ray?

However, only when you have sat in casualty do you begin to understand the problem. The sheer number of cases that came through the door that could have gone to a Doctor on the Monday morning was huge. There were grazed knees and stubbed toes where the nail had gone a funny colour. It is clear that the NHS has a long way to go on the reform path and there is also a big job to be done in changing the culture of the patients to understand what is and what is not a casualty case. That probably includes me as well because I discovered talking to someone in a pub last night that I could have taken my daughter to the minor injuries unit in Teddington and saved myself the wait!!!