EMERGENCY patients were left waiting up to 14 hours to be seen in freezing conditions at Glasgow's Royal Infirmary.

 

Patients have described chaotic scenes at the A&E department on Monday night.

At least 15 patients were waiting on trolleys because there were no beds available.

Patients described freezing conditions in assessment unit and said staff were serving tea and sandwiches to patients.

Nurses were advising patients not to leave because they would then have to start from scratch.

Linda McCann, from Moodiesburn, arrived at the hospital's assessment unit at 7pm on Monday night, with a letter from her doctor saying she should be admitted because she was suffering stroke symptoms.

She was eventually seen at 4am in the morning yesterday.

However she said the hospital could not admit her because there was a shortage of beds.

She said: "It was heartbreaking to watch, they were all under pressure. The nurses were run ragged. You could see they were exhausted.

"There were at least 15 patients on trolleys. The cubicles were all filled.

"They had lost the blood sample of a patient and it had to be done again.

"One woman came in at 4pm and she was seen at 3.30am in the morning. I didn't realise how bad things were until I saw this.

"One nurse told me there was supposed to be three doctors on duty but one had had to leave at 1am."