A WOMAN in her eighties said she was left waiting for 25 hours in a hospital chair at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital without being offered food or drink. 

The patient, who wishes to remain anonymous, said she had a fall and was taken to hospital on Monday (March 11). 

She said that the doctors recommended she stay in hospital, but she was never offered any food or drink during this time, despite being diabetic. 

She said: “I was just sat there. There was a waiting room full of people and I was just in a wheelchair. To think they are closing two hospitals when they haven’t got enough beds for people!”. 

She added “It was awful. It was terrible - and I wasn’t the only one. It started on Monday, I waited half an hour for an ambulance and was told to go in myself, so there was no ambulance. 

Then this started at the hospital, waiting all that time in a wheelchair, holding towels to my head because it was bleeding so much. You can’t blame the nurses, it’s not their fault - they are just overworked.” 

The woman’s family came to support her and later lodged a complaint.

Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust said: ’We are sorry to hear that this patient waited for a long time in the Emergency Department (ED) at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital.

Without further information, we are unable to comment on any specific details of their care. We recommend that they contact our Patient Advice and Liaison service (PALs) so that their experience can be fully investigated.

We acknowledge that some patients are waiting longer than any of us would like and we are working hard to improve this against a background of very high demand for urgent care services.

While waiting in the ED, we recommend that any patient speaks to a member of staff if they are in pain, would like something to eat or drink, are feeling too hot or too cold or need help with anything, especially if, like this patient, they are suffering from a particular medical condition’.