Mother, 22, suffered a miscarriage on A&E hospital FLOOR after her pleas for help were ignored for six hours

A young woman was left in blood-soaked clothes and suffered a miscarriage after hospital staff ignored her desperate requests for help for six hours.

Leanne Kenward, 22, was moved to two different rooms after turning up at Accident and Emergency, but wasn’t seen by a doctor until after her harrowing experience.

She was changing her clothes with the help of her boyfriend behind a curtain when the nine-week-old foetus fell to the floor. When they told a nurse what had happened, it was picked up and put in a container next to them.

Leanne Kenward, 22, arrived at Whipps Cross University Hospital after suffering heavy bleeding. But the student waited two hours to see a nurse and another four for a doctor - by which time she had miscarried

Miss Kenward was so distressed by the experience she demanded to be seen immediately by a doctor so she could be discharged.

She said: ‘Compassion should be the first thing you receive on the NHS, especially when you turn up at A&E. But no one thought about me or how I felt.

‘There were several people who saw me crying but no one was nice to me. They treated me like a dog. It wasn’t like they were rushed off their feet. I saw people sitting around a computer talking.

‘I’d never had a miscarriage before. If someone could have explained what was happening to my body it would have been so much better.’ The hairdresser started bleeding at the home she shares with her parents in Walthamstow, East London, at 1pm on December 9. She went to Whipps Cross University Hospital in Leytonstone an hour later after her boyfriend Billy King, 25, a gas engineer, rushed home from work.

The couple explained that they thought she was having a miscarriage when they arrived at the emergency department but were left there for two hours.

Miss Kenward, who has a 22-month-old daughter, Billie-Mae, with Mr King, was moved to a side room after she lost a lot of blood when she went to the toilet.

‘There was a doctor in there and she was saying, “Why has she been brought in here?”’ she said. ‘I was crying because she was so rude. She said she was going to see why they’d put me there.’

The couple weren’t moved, however, and Miss Kenward continued to lose blood.

They asked a passing nurse if she could get changed but were told it was ‘best if you stay like that’.

At 7pm they were transferred to a bed on a ward and again asked for clothes.

‘They said there was a drawer with some and we should use those. Basically we had to do it ourselves,’ Miss Kenward said.

The mother-of-one said: 'I was treated like a dog. I told them I thought I was having a miscarriage and I thought that might speed things up but nothing happened'

She was getting changed when an ‘untold amount of blood’ came out, along with the foetus.

‘It was just horrific to see. When my partner told someone what had happened they picked it up off the floor and put it in a plastic pot on the bedside table,’ she said. ‘Billy helped me clean myself and we sat there waiting for a doctor.

‘By that time I was furious so I went to reception and told them, “I’ve had a miscarriage by myself. Can you get a doctor to see me so that he can tell me I’ve had a miscarriage and I can go home?”’

She was finally seen a few minutes later by a doctor who apologised for her treatment but said he had only just come on shift.

Miss Kenward was allowed home at about 11.30pm.

She believes she lost two pints of blood and passed about 40 clots. Joyce Robins, of pressure group Patient Concern, said the case was a ‘terrible example of what hospitals are becoming’. She added: ‘There seems to have been bad management, bad communication, a lack of staff, a lack of compassion – you name it.

‘I don’t think I’ve heard of one as bad as this and my heart goes out to the poor young woman.’

Miss Kenward lodged an official complaint in January. She received an apology over the phone and was promised a formal letter of apology but this has not arrived.

A spokesman for Barts Health NHS Trust said: ‘We sincerely apologise for the distress caused to Miss Kenward and her partner during this difficult time.’