My friend was taken to City Hospital in Birmingham by Ambulance since he swallowed a sharp piece of glass that was found in a packet of crisps. He was in a lot of pain and very uncomfortable indeed. As usual I can’t complement the Ambulance staff enough who were excellent and very supportive throughout.

City Hospital A&E was however the quietest I’ve ever seen with most of the bays empty in the treatment rooms. Only a couple of people at any one time were in the reception area, but most of the time there was no-one at all waiting when I popped out at various times for some fresh air.

Being so quiet I expected my friend to be dealt with quicker, WRONG! Despite being extremely quiet throughout A&E, my friend was still forced to wait for literally close to 3 hours just to be seen by a doctor and when he complained about the pain to a passing nurse after being abandoned for around 2 hours, he was just told that he’d just have to bare with them for even longer and she told him this in what was my opinion a blunt manor even though he was very polite to her. My friend was in the majors section, but when I glanced through, even the minors area was extremely quiet. I even saw staff sitting back drinking tea / coffee because it was that quiet, so there really was NO excuse what-so-ever in my opinion for this severe delay, plus the delay could have had very serious adverse implications to his health.

After finally being seen by a doctor, my friend was eventually X-rayed, but by this time the glass had apparently un-wedged itself and moved towards his intestines. After around 4 hours waiting, he was finally admitted to the Surgical Assessment Unit ward, but the ‘beds’ were very uncomfortable and were in fact narrow hospital trolleys instead. After waiting another few hours, he was told that he should have been X-rayed virtually immediately after admission and that the wait could have caused more serious problems where he’d could have needed an urgent operation, but he was lucky.

My friend has still got a lot of pain in his throat and down to his stomach. He can only eat very squashy food and even this is very painful. Apparently if he was X-rayed immediately as he should have been, they could have removed the stuck glass from his throat when it was actually still stuck there, meaning he wouldn’t have been put at any more risk. Also they’d be a lot less damage for his body to heal, he’d have suffered less pain and he’d have been sent home much quicker. In other words, by making my friend wait unnecessarily for hours upon hours wasted a lot more of everyone’s time.

Finally on a good note, I will say that the staff in the Surgical Assessment Unit were pleasant and more helpful than in A&E. Unfortunately in my opinion City Hospital’s A&E department needs urgent improvement and procedures near to be overhauled as the standard of care is in my opinion no where near acceptable. I wish inspectors would go in and pose as customers.

(The comment above is also without prejudice to City Hospital or their A&E departmeand is my own personal opinion that cannot be declared as definite fact!)