"Box Hill ED response slow and confusing"

I am a member of staff at Eastern Health and recently I was unfortunate to need Box Hill hospital's help. It was early on a weekend morning and I had a serious rapidly advancing skin infection, with increasing fever, great pain on walking and more worryingly a bit of a fuzzy head, making decision making a bit slow. So I was really disturbed to walk into Box Hill ED and:

1) find no-one sitting at the reception desk.

2) I searched thoroughly but could find no way of attracting staff attention, no bell, no buzzer, no phone, nothing.

3) I could see staff in the distance down a corridor in the ED cubicle area but even though I made eye contact and raised my hand I felt the staff ignored me and continued chatting.

There was only one other patient waiting in the reception area and although I asked them how to get attention they just laughed. So I lay across two reception chairs and waited, and waited whilst my head got fuzzier. Eventually a person in casual clothes approached the reception window and slowly, and I mean slowly and casually with no haste, asked me question after question and took time inputting data into their computer screen. I was then asked to take a seat again.

Eventually I was approached by a ED staff member in scrubs and lead limping into a cubicle where I was again left for many minutes alone whilst I watched my leg redness and swelling continue to increase and spread. With every member of staff that approached my stretcher I had to repeat myself over and over. I felt sick and dizzy and this is stupid to have to do this.

I think this covers the main bad areas of my patient experience, the good stuff came later on the wards.