"A&E? Don't bother": Man 'struggling to breathe' forced to lie down on hospital floor in 'horrendous' 10-hour wait

An asthma sufferer endured an ‘horrendous’ 10-hour wait in A&E after falling ill and having breathing difficulties. Dave Moth, 30, from Middleton spent a night on a ‘rock hard’ floor at Royal Oldham Hospital, with staff offering no indication of when he would be seen or where he could get a drink of water or find a vending machine, his partner Becka Jackson claims.

Becka, a transport manager, had called the NHS 111 helpline after he became feverish one evening at the couple’s home in Boarshaw. She is now calling for health bosses to make changes to take the pressure off A&E departments, believing a ‘massive’ update to the 111 service or more ‘face-to-face’ GP appointments could take the pressure off urgent and emergency care.

“If anyone said ‘I’m going to A&E in Oldham, I would say ‘don’t bother’ - one guy had been sat in a bed in a corridor for 20 hours,” she told the Local Democracy Reporting Service. “Yes, the NHS is free. Yes, we are very lucky. But, you know what, if I was that poorly I thought I’d die, I'd much rather be at home than lay on a bed in a corridor for 20 hours."

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The 30-year-old called 111 at around 9pm on Tuesday, June 7 and, after answering a series of questions that she describes as 'vague', was told an out-of-hours doctor would call her back within six hours.

To her relief, she received a call just 40 minutes later - but was left frustrated when the doctor began asking the same questions she had previously answered and found his insistence on speaking to Dave ‘really rude’. "I said ‘If you listen, you can hear him being sick at the side of me'," Becka said.

The couple were advised to go to A&E at Royal