THE relative of a woman who waited 12 hours through the night to be admitted to the Great Western Hospital has described scenes in the emergency department as being like the Third World.

He told of seeing people lying on trolleys queued up waiting for treatment or admission as the cubicles were full.

“There were paramedics and stretchers backing up through casualty,” he said. “It was like a third world country.”

His elderly relative, who was taken in by ambulance late on Tuesday night, was not seen by a doctor until after 4.30am, he said. “That in itself is disgusting.”

The man, who identified himself to the Advertiser but wants to remain anonymous, was still waiting for her to be admitted at 2pm yesterday. He said: “I know she needs to be admitted. In the space of half an hour I had a doctor saying she needed to be admitted and then a nurse saying they were waiting for her to be discharged.

“It is very depressing for her. I’m not going to take the responsibility for discharging her and taking her home only for her to be back in hospital again.”

When he spoke to medical staff about the delay he said he was told there were no beds. “They said they couldn’t do anything about it because there was a bed crisis.”

He said: “It was worse this morning. There were at least six or seven stretchers going through casualty.”

He counted six trolleys queued up by the nurses’ station and paramedics with three or four trolleys in another section.

“It is not the environment or situation I would expect to see in this country.”

Back in August it was revealed that emergency department staff flagged up 121 unsafe incidents in the first four months of the year and that the triggers included patients queueing, delays in patient assessment and review, not able to take rest breaks and staff feeling overwhelmed, stressed or unable to cope.

This time last year health service regulator Monitor launched an investigation after the Care Quality Commission published a report calling for improvement at the hospital and issued a warning notice for the emergency department.

The report said the trust needed to modernise the design and layout of the department to speed up the process so patients could leave or be moved to the right department for treatment more quickly.

A statement from the hospital foundation trust said: “It’s normal for tests and treatment to take place in the department while patients are cared for on trolleys, until they can be moved to a ward.

“Our big challenge is ensuring patients can leave hospital when they are well enough.

This is reliant on the whole local health and care system working together, so that arrangements for further care and support can be made early on.”

The spokesman added: “A big thank you to all our staff who work hard to provide safe and high quality care at very busy times.”