Grandmother, 86, endures ‘humiliating’ eight-hour wait in A&E two days in a row
THE family of a severely unwell grandmother who endured two consecutive eight-hour stays in A&E said the experience left her feeling “humiliated, degraded and traumatised”, writes Mark Smith.
June Whiley, 86, was told to visit the emergency department at University Hospital of Wales (UHW) in Cardiff on Wednesday, October 27, after suffering with severe head pain, dizziness and dehydration.
Following an initial triage, the pensioner spent eight hours in the waiting area before being assessed and discharged home.
But the next day she took a turn for the worse and was advised by her GP to return to A&E immediately.
Her second stay proved even more upsetting as she ended up lying on a cold, hard metal bench after feeling as though she was going to collapse in the wheelchair hospital staff had given her.
She also suffered the “embarrassment” of being sick into a wooden bowl several times in front of countless other patients while wearing a nightie, dressing gown and draped in a blanket given to her by paramedics waiting outside.
“I have been to the A&E many times, but I have never experienced anything like this before in my life,” said June, a grandmother-of-two from Roath, Cardiff.
“It’s not the fault of the doctors or nurses who were working their socks off. But they were completely understaffed and I would never want to experience anything like that ever again. The doctors and nurses deserve a medal.”
June’s daughter Nicola Barnes, who was with her frail mother during the entire ordeal as she could barely see, said their uncomfortable and lengthy waits opened her eyes to the scale of the problem facing emergency care in the NHS.
“To see my 86-year-old mother in that position, who’s paid her National Insurance and worked all her life, was just disgusting,” said Nicola.
“It was absolute bedlam in there. The nurses were running around like headless chickens, people were sitting on the floor and I saw someone walking out because they couldn’t stand to be there any longer.”
Nicola said her mother had been experiencing problems with her eyes, including age-related macular degeneration, for years and had suffered a retinal hemorrhage only months before which required injections.
Recalling the events of Wednesday, October 27, Nicola said: “When I came home from work my mother was sitting in my living room and she looked absolutely awful. She was holding her head and she looked like she was going to collapse.
“We tried ringing Specsavers first to look at the back of her eye and see if she’s had another bleed, but they replied and said my mum would need to go straight to A&E.”
When they walked into the emergency unit at UHW, Nicola said there “wasn’t a seat in the house” so June ended up in a wheelchair for the duration of their first visit.
“It was absolutely chock-a-block in there. We got there at about 5.45pm, she was seen at about midnight and sent home about 1.30am.”
However, June continued to deteriorate at home in the 24 hours that followed. A GP managed to visit her home in Roath to assess her, but stressed that she needed to go back to A&E for a second time as she had “turned grey” and could barely walk.
“We asked the doctor if there was any way we could have an ambulance for her, but he said we’d be looking at a 36-hour wait,” Nicola added.
On arrival at UHW on Thursday, October 29, Nicola said June was taken to a “green” area of the waiting room occupied by non-Covid patients. However, following an assessment she was found to have a slight temperature and placed in an “amber” area for suspected positive cases.
“My mum was vomiting into a wooden bowl in front of all these people. I was going back and forth to the nurses pleading with them to give her some privacy – even if it was in a cupboard – but they said they had nowhere,” said Nicola.
“There was no dignity for her at all. It was absolutely horrendous.”
At around 3am on Friday, October 29, June asked to be taken out of the wheelchair she’d been in for many hours as she felt as if she was going to collapse.
“So we lay her down on these metal benches. By this point she was shivering as she was so cold. I was looking around for a nurse and I couldn’t find one, but there were paramedics stood outside the door. I went up to them, crying my eyes out, and said ‘please, please can I have a blanket for my mum in there?’ And they said ‘yes, we’ll get you two’.
“You could see there were loads of ambulances outside A&E with patients in them waiting to come in.”
Nicola said the only place to get her dehydrated mum a drink in A&E was a communal water fountain which had been used by scores of disgruntled patients already that night.
After roughly an eight-hour wait, June was given a CT scan and taken to an assessment ward next to A&E at 6am where she was seen by a junior doctor.
Nicola added: “Her vomiting had stopped because they’d given her an anti-sickness tablet. The junior doctor turned around and said that nothing had shown up on the CT scan. As he wasn’t an eye doctor he put her on a saline drip and then sent her home with a letter saying she needed to go back to Specsavers.”
A spokeswoman for Cardiff and Vale University Health Board said: “As we enter the winter months, we will be experiencing the most challenging period in NHS history. The continued pressure brought about by the pandemic has put our services under considerable strain, however we would like to assure staff, patients and visitors that we have a robust plan in place and are working to alleviate pressures to ensure people have the best possible access to
care.
“Our emergency unit remains increasingly busy, we would like to take the opportunity to remind people that if their condition is not life or limb threatening they can call our CAV 24/7 service on 0300 10 20 247 and our team will assess them and direct them to the most appropriate service.
“We would also like to encourage people to get vaccinated. Getting vaccinated provides the best protection against serious illness from viruses such as the flu and Covid-19.”