"Hospital visit treatment"

I took my elderly mother to the ED dept after an episode of chest tightness. She has a history of Atrial Fibrilation (AF).

She was taken into Resus very quickly & monitored, given medication to bring her heart rate down (on admission it was 171). Whilst in ED, she was attended to by two doctors & a wonderful nurse.

Whilst trying to get her heart rate down after several injections, I was disquieted by a couple of observations.  Hand hygiene was a bit hit & miss - the bottle of antimicrobial handle solution at the end of the bed was empty; some previous results of a patient with same first & last name were printed out & incorrectly put with my mother's current paperwork; and, an ED nurse not assigned to my mother walked past our cubicle, glancing at the monitor, shouted out - oh, she's in AF.  This same nurse also intruded whilst my mother's assigned nurse was filling in paperwork to enquire about her condition. I felt her behaviour was both inappropriate & unprofessional.

My mother was taken to a ward & discharged the next day.  The discharge from the transit lounge took 2.5 hours. After being told a referral letter for a cardiologist would be forwarded to my mother, we later discovered there was no such referral done.