Birmingham’s Heartlands Hospital A&E has been slammed by a patient’s daughter after her mum had to wait for fourteen hours before seeing a doctor.
Daughter Sibka Minhas took her 69-year-old mother – who suffers from dementia – to the A&E department on December 15, at midday.
Her mother spent hours on a bed in a corridor in the A&E department and was finally admitted at around 2am after waiting for FOURTEEN hours.
Mrs Minhas had to visit the children’s emergency department with her husband Asif, when their son Yusuf, aged 6, became ill with gastric problems, around 2pm on January 28 and again had to wait until 10pm to see a doctor – an EIGHT hour wait.
On February 14 Yusuf who became very ill and the family say again they had to wait six hours before finally seeing a doctor.
“The Government needs to look at this. It’s not on. You can’t blame staff or doctors. The system needs a shake up,” Mrs Minhas told BirminghamLive.
“You can’t wait that long to be seen- it’s unfair. I’ve got the ability to speak out but others might be used to it.”
Speaking about her first visit to the hospital with her poorly mother, Mrs Minhas said: “She was refusing food and dehydrated. They put her on a bed which was in a corridor. There were others in these beds waiting to be seen.
“They kept coming to do her observations in the corridor. They then moved her to one of the A&E areas.
“It took a phenomenal time for a doctor to come and get us. We sat there, we waited, waited and waited. We waited for 14 hours.
“Mum finally got admitted about 2am the next day.”
A month later Mrs Minhas also had to endure a long wait with her husband Asim, 48, when their son Yusuf became ill with gastric problems.
She said: “It was a massive wait. We saw the triage nurse and she said she would let us know when we could go up to the Paediatric Assessment Unit.
“We then got into the unit and waited three hours before we saw a doctor. The doctor came and did an examination and they discharged us at roughly 10pm – we had been there eight hours.”
on February 14, the family said they were forced to return to the hospital at around 8pm when Yusuf was “experiencing stomach pain” and “vomiting”.
Mrs Minhas said: “We waited, waited and waited to be taken to a cubicle. I was repeatedly asking the receptionist for when the doctor was coming.
“On one occasion, there was one doctor for about 20 patients in the waiting area because the rest were in paediatrics.
“He got seen about 2am by a doctor who said to go back to the GP. It was six hours.”
She added: “It’s left me thinking what’s happened to the NHS ? On two of these occasions we were sent to A&E by our GP and NHS Direct.”
A spokesman from University Hospitals Birmingham which runs Heartlands, said: “UHB continues to experience an unprecedented rise in the number of emergency admissions of really sick patients across our hospital sites.
“At the same time, a large number of patients attending emergency departments who could be appropriately seen by other healthcare professionals such as GPs or pharmacists, is preventing us from dealing with acute patients in a timely manner.”
