A young woman was left ‘traumatised’ after claiming to have been left sat in her own urine and vomit during a nine-hour A&E ordeal. The 30-year-old said she ‘lost control of her bladder and began being sick’ when she started ‘struggling to breathe’ while in the waiting room at Manchester Royal Infirmary’s emergency department.
The mother-of-one said she attended MRI’s A&E at around 11.30pm on May 12, feeling ‘nauseous, quivering and suffering vertigo’. She claimed nurses warned the wait would be ‘eight hours’, which she said she ‘understood, as the department was very busy and they had a lot of emergencies’.
But two hours into the queue, she claims she began feeling like she could ‘hardly breathe’. The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Manchester Evening News : “I began to be sick in the A&E corridor and began to also lose control of my bladder and urinated on my sleep wear.
“Two men who were also in the waiting room saw what happened and got me towels from the toilet to clean myself up. I was so grateful to them but felt quite embarrassed because I was being sick and wetting myself at the same time.”
The woman said a nurse then took her through to a ward, where she received an anti-sickness tablet. She says she was then told to go back to the waiting room - to sit in the clothes she had been sick and urinated in.
Despite ‘not feeling any better’, the woman claims she was still not seen by a medic for any observations to be taken. “I used what little energy I had to take myself to speak with one of the nurses and explained how I felt,” she added.
“They did my observations, which showed my heart rate and blood pressure were raised. I wasn’t even offered a gown or anything to change into while I was wet."
The Trafford woman claims she was in the waiting room until 8.30am, only to be told by a ‘very kind’ doctor that none of the tests could give an indication as to why she was in pain, or suffering the symptoms which brought her to A&E, and will now be sent for further neurological investigations.
“I suffer from panic attacks, severe anxiety and depression, and that made me ten times worse. I wouldn’t have been bothered had they given me a gown to sit in,” she added.
“If I am ever really poorly now I will think twice about going to the hospital as I feel traumatised by how I’ve been treated, it’s taken away what very little confidence I had.”
A spokesperson for Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust said: “We sincerely apologise to the patient for their poor experience when attending our emergency department and we will be discussing this with them.”
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