A children's hospital has been branded a "war zone" by a father, with kids "sprawled all over the floor" and queues out of the door with the NHS once again in crisis, the Liverpool Echo reports. The concerned dad had taken his two-year-old child into an A&E department at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool with a large rash after being unable to get seen through the NHS 111 service or at a walk-in centre.
The father had to wait in a queue outside the department for 40 minutes, with his child not triaged for a further hour. Despite the wait, he praised the hospital staff throughout.
He also shared an image of the queue and described the chaotic scenes inside. He said: "There were kids sprawled all over the floor in ever direction we looked, my partner said it looked like a war zone. This was after it took us an hour and 40 minutes just to speak to a receptionist.
"The government put out this propaganda about getting seen through 111 or at the walk-in centre but no parent is going to wait that long when they are really worried, they are going to go to hospital - every child I saw in there needed to be in there, but the hospitals are beyond crisis now."
It took around eight hours for his child to be seen and diagnosed, with the family hopeful they will be able to take him home soon. These types of reports are not concerningly not foreign, with enormous pressure currently facing NHS staff.
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