A woman claims she was shut in a store cupboard at the William Harvey Hospital and forgotten about for almost three hours.

Charlie Vella-Walton, 31, from Folkestone, rushed to the Willesborough hospital after feeling ill on Friday, January 13.

But after an initial test and blood checks by hospital staff, she said she was attached to a drip, put on a trolley and shut in what she describes as a "dusty store cupboard with no buzzer."

A spokesman for the Trust that runs the hospital said the area where she was kept was not a store cupboard, but a small clinical room.

Mrs Vella-Walton, said: "The nurse wheeled me in this dusty room and said 'sorry this is the only space we have got'.

"At first the staff were brilliant. I had my bloods taken but then was I was hooked up to a drip and just left waiting and waiting in that room."

Mrs Vella-Walton, who has a catheter, said she went to hospital because her recurring urine infection had not gone away, despite previous medical treatment.

She went to the William Harvey Hospital around 1am with her wife Jac, 34, to get further advice.

She added: "The nurses had to change my catheter, and that has to be one with discretion but when the nurse left me in the room, she walked out and shut the door.

"I could see they were really busy, I was in that room for three hours. I couldn’t move so luckily my wife was with me, she alerted the staff when the drip had finished to find out what was going on.

"They said they would be with me in ‘one minute’, but an hour and a half later I was still in the store cupboard - I had been forgotten about."

Eventually, at around 6am, Mrs Vella-Walton received her blood test results and was sent home by a doctor.

She put in a formal complaint to the hospital and said she has since received a phonecall to apologise.

She said: "I understand the staff are really busy. I spend my life in and out of hospital for different reasons and I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for them.

"When I told them I wasn’t happy with what happened I suggested maybe they should have put a note on the door to say I was there and they agreed they should have.

A spokesman for East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust (EKHUFT) said Mrs Vella-Walton was treated in a side room and that there are no storage cupboards in the A&E area.

"I could have died in that room and no one would have realised because they had clearly forgotten I was in there" - Charlie Vella-Walton

Sally Smith, Chief Nurse said: “We are very sorry that Mrs Vella-Walton had concerns about her care.

"We have contacted Mrs Vella-Walton to reassure her that we treated her in a side room, which is a clinical area, not a storage cupboard.

“This room has recently benefited from a charitable donation and is undergoing a refurbishment.

“We have reviewed Mrs Vella-Walton’s care and she was given the appropriate treatment at all times whilst she was in the department.

“Our patient experience team has been in touch with Mrs Vella-Walton to apologise, and the matron of the department has taken her concerns on board.”