On Sunday, July 1, my 85-year-old mother collapsed and was taken by ambulance to the A&E at the Royal Sussex County Hospital at 2pm. She was put on a trolley in the corridor, moved to a cubicle at 6pm, seen by a doctor at 10pm and told she would have to be admitted.
The next day, she was back in the corridor and, by late afternoon, dehydrated and extremely confused. A saline drip was set up but, because the nurses didn't have time to breathe, let alone do their job properly, when she got to the ward at 8pm we discovered the drip wasn't working and she ended up with an infection in her hand.
Needless to say, my mother wasn't the only one suffering. Apparently, the staff nurse in charge had run out in tears because she couldn't cope. My mother was on a trolley for 32 hours - not quite so long as an American visitor, 35 hours. Not a very good story to take back home.
If Stuart Welling, the chief executive, doesn't do something urgently, he won't have any nurses to run his A&E department.
-Mrs C Thomas, Larkfield Way, Brighton
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