AS UNITS STRUGGLE TO COPE
Have you had to long endure wait in a A&E?
THE Record told how a mum waited almost 11 hours to see a doctor in A&E – despite being doubled up in agony.
Her husband said she went into Monklands Hospital, Airdrie, at 6.30pm on December 27.
She was put on a drip and given painkillers but wasn’t seen by a doctor until 5.15am the following day.
The husband also told how he saw two elderly women sitting on chairs in the corridor, alongside a young man who was bleeding profusely from his arm.
His wife was discharged that day because they didn’t have a bed for her.
She was asked to return for tests as an outpatient instead because there were “still 50 people waiting downstairs for beds.” The husband said staff in the department were rushed off their feet. THE last time A & E waiting times were as bad was in early 2015. Back then, there was chaos across the country, with people backed up on trolleys in corridors and one hospital even using a condemned Portakabin as a makeshift overspill casualty department. The now closed Get in health touch with our Aitken editor at Vivienne record.co.uk v.aitken@daily 0141 or call 309 3251 Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow had been using the Portakabin as a storage space but it was given a lick of paint and put into service during the beds crisis.
Some patients waited more than 24 hours in casualty. And there were similar stories elsewhere in Scotland.
Some A&E units were still struggling by that summer.