Royal Derby Hospital: Woman endures painful 17-hour A&E wait

Rebecca Smith eventually required surgery for her condition

The family of a woman left waiting for more than 17 hours in at accident and emergency department said they were "far from happy".

Rebecca Smith arrived at the Royal Derby Hospital at 19:45 BST on Thursday but was not seen until about 13:00 on Friday.

She then returned to the hospital for surgery on Saturday.

Hospital bosses apologised and said it was not the service they wished to provide.

Ms Smith's father Stephen Horsfall said his daughter, of Swanwick, in Derbyshire, was in the waiting room without food, only water, and in "a lot of pain".

"The managers ought to be going down into those departments daily to see what can be done," he said.

"From what she was saying, it did not seem to be overly busy."

Ms Smith, 40, was sent home with pain relief and asked to return on Saturday morning for an operation.

Mr Horsfall said her care from the surgery team and after-care on the ward was "first class" but they were "far from happy about the wait in A&E".

There is a system health and care problem for the whole of Derbyshire which is having a knock-on effect, said the trust

Meanwhile, Nathan Black took his 80-year-old mother who has cancer to A&E last week where she was not seen for 14 hours, spending 22 hours there in total.

They arrived at 18:30 and were seen at 09:00 the next day.

Mr Black said: "They put her on one of the side wards. She was on a bed - it wasn't a hospital bed but was more of an ambulance-type theatre bed."

He said except a glass of water and nurses checking on her, it was 14 hours before she was seen by a doctor and diagnosed with angina.

"To be left that long was particularly disappointing which is no reflection on the staff that work there," he said.

"From what we could see they were working the jobs of three people. The staff are friendly but they are overworked."

A&E pinch-point

The University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust said A&E attendances were 20% higher between January and May than the same period in 2021.

This equated to a monthly average of 20,238 compared to 16,757.

Dr Magnus Harrison, interim chief executive of the trust, said: "I am sorry. It's not the level of service as a trust we wish to offer.

"The problem is a whole system health and care problem for the whole of Derbyshire and that manifests itself in the pinch-point that is our emergency department."

He added they struggled to discharge patients when their treatment was finished due to a "massive workforce shortfall" in domiciliary and nursing home care, which had a knock-on effect on the emergency department and ambulance service.