Mother's 14-hour wait to see doctor in A&E

A young mother told today how she was left waiting for 14 hours in an accident and emergency ward with a potentially lethal blood clot.

Helen Barnes, 27, a religious education teacher, says she was frightened and in pain as she waited through the night to see a doctor at Southend Hospital.

She had to leave her five-day-old daughter Katrina at home with her husband. Government guidelines state that patients should not be waiting in A&E for more than four hours. Yet a report published this week by the Healthcare Commission, the inspection body for NHS and private hospitals, revealed almost a quarter of patients needing emergency treatment still wait more than four hours.

Mrs Barnes had just been released from Basildon Hospital after giving birth when she began to suffer severe pains in her lower leg. Worried, she saw an emergency doctor who sent her to A&E at Southend. She arrived just after 8pm on a busy Friday and was told she faced a two-hour wait.

But she spent the night worrying about her baby while sitting among drunken patients nursing injuries from nights out.

Today the mother of three said: "I am absolutely horrified that I had to endure a 14-hour wait for an extremely serious illness. I have lost all confidence in the NHS. The individuals who saw me were great. It appears they are understaffed."

She also requested a breast pump twice but staff did not provide her with one. By 2am Mrs Barnes, of Benfleet, had still not been seen by a doctor.

She said: "As the hours went by nobody told me to keep my leg elevated in case of deep vein thrombosis and the pain was getting worse. I started to panic.

"By 2am there was just no one there - no nurses, the receptionist just disappeared, so there was no one to ask for help. I did not expect that, considering I had just had a baby."

At 5.30am, Mrs Barnes was moved to an observation ward and finally seen by a doctor at 10.30am. She has since received blood thinning injections for the clot and is awaiting the results of further scans to discover what was wrong with her leg.

A spokesman for Southend Hospital said: "We are sorry to hear of Mrs Barnes's comments. Our A&E department was extremely busy over the weekend and if she wants to write directly to us we will respond to her personally."