West Middlesex University Hospital 2015-07-11 Person 1 5 0

We brought our young daughter to the hospital with a cut to her head that was open and bleeding. We waited in front of the reception desk to be checked in holding paper towels to her head to stop the bleeding. Despite our clear anxiousness we were studiously ignored by the 4 staff behind the glass partitions. While one staff member was checking in another patient and another seemed to be filling in a form on a computer directly in front of us, a male nurse at another unoccupied check-in window was chatting and laughing with a female nurse who after a few minutes disappeared through a door in the back. The male nurse then ignored us for another minute or two before waving us over. He asked us in a very mechanical manner a few questions about what had happened, filled in a form on his computer and told us to sit down. When we asked how long we would have to wait for someone to take a look at our daughter's bleeding head he said around an hour or so. In a modern "first world" country a child with a bleeding wound in her head should not be made to wait an hour for basic care or at least a competent initial screening. Clearly the management of the hospital needs to upgrade the quality of the staff at the reception desk and find a more appropriate initial screening process. Incompetent and disinterested staff at the initial screening desk can wreck the effectiveness and reputation of a hospital even if the care once inside is excellent. We didn't wait to find out. We drove immediately to Teddington Hospital where we were seen quickly and our daughter received excellent care.