I was taken via ambulance to A&E due to sudden severe pain in my chest and left arm. There was about an hours wait for the ambulance but the paramedics were really good when they arrived. My ECG was fine so the issue wasn\t immediately life threatening but they said I needed two blood tests four hours apart to rule out other heart conditions. In addition, I am 18 weeks pregnant. I was waiting 2 hours in A&E with no communication or explanation before finally getting triaged and having my first blood test. No one checked the heartbeat of my baby or did a scan (maybe a scan wasn\t needed, but I would have thought they should have checked the heartbeat). Nothing was said about getting a second blood test, I was just told to wait in the \major\ unit to see a doctor for the result of my first blood test. When I got there, the place was jam packed and people were laying on the floors. I was told the wait to see a doctor was 14 hours! (Bearing in mind the 1 hour wait for the ambulance, the half hour drive to the hospital, and the 2 hour wait we had already had). At this point the pain had gone and it didn\t seem like the second blood test or a check on the baby would be happening so I self discharged. I was told I could get the results of the blood test from my GP on Monday but it\s now Tuesday and the results still haven\t been sent to my surgery. I am still in the dark as to what happened to me and have no reassurance that the baby is ok. I would avoid going to this A&E unless you really have no choice.

My mother fell over and hit her head badly on the pavement. She was covered in blood, badly bruised, shocked and in pain. Arriving in A&E she didnt see a triage nurse for 8 hours. After we had been there for 10 hours we were told that there was one doctor on duty and that we should all travel to Canterbury if we wanted to be seen as there would be a further 14 hour wait! When we tried to discharge her to travel to Canterbury we were told that as she had a serious head injury they didnt want us to leave - so we had to move to a different ward where people were lying all over the floor waiting as there were not enough chairs - she was finally seen by a doctor at 2.30am 9 hours after arriving and then she was told that she had to have a CT scan as she might have a bleed on the brain. She finally had this after 10 hours at 3.30am and then we had the results at 4.30am. At 5.30am - 12 hours after arriving, a nurse came over and did a tiny bit of cleaning up. That was all she needed and we were up all night without sleep while my mum was in pain. Absolutely shocking that despite being told that the bleeding might be serious we couldnt even have a nurse or doctor check her over. The lack of staffing and lack of communication was terrible. At one stage after an 11 hour wait two of the nurses had an argument about who should clean my mum up as they didnt think it was their job. Appalling.

Fed up with text/phone reminders requiring response only to be followed up with vague phone message re forthcoming appointment - if you dont take calls leave more details as you never do recall within 24hrs - do I assume youre cancelling? rescheduling? Id already confirmed Id attend by earlier text. Overkill. Pointless. Stressful as I initially cancelled an appointment for fear of being bumped off list because I couldnt confirm my appointment only to turn up on hastily rescheduled appointment to be told Id cancelled. By the way Im a cancer patient and anxious not to waste time/appointments only to be stressed to the heavens by this system.