It's not A&E that's the problem - it's people!!!

I’ve just spent 24 hrs with elderly father in A&E - he is severely immunocompromised and suffering from sepsis. He was kept in A&E as no bed to go to. He was put on a trolley in a curtained off bay directly as someone was taken out. When I asked if I could clean the space they refused.

Today they told me to wear a plastic apron and gloves to protect him. Yet the toilet he had to use defied belief.

All this came after he was kept several hours sitting in a crowded room next to a woman bleeding into a plastic bag.

Drunks were politely ushered out and I heard the porters reporting that they had been taken to the bus stop.

A crowd of pissed up teenagers were hanging out at the entrance, I’m pretty sure just for the hell of it.

A woman suffering with an ectopic pregnancy was screaming on a trolley in a corridor with gas and air as the nurse desperately called around for someone to take her to a proper environment.

What point am I making? It was a scene of the good, the bad and the ugly. And sadly mostly the latter two.

Haha you say that as if I’m not from the UK, worked for the NHS including A&E and still have family and friends using it. Pretty sure I’d know more about the local area in the part of the UK I’m from than you. And no you don’t just get to order whatever tests when using private insurance, nor do your Drs. I don’t know anyone that has been in and out that fast including a friend that went in very recently. She was there 11 hours. But sure you know more than me.

@Callsluvsbunnies, every time I have had extended dealings with the NHS, it has been extremely obvious that the service couldn't possibly be run without immigrants. I for one have been extremely grateful that they have been willing to come here and use their considerable range of skills within the NHS. If you think the UK is so bad, do feel free to leave and become an immigrant somewhere else.

What was @PinkSparklyPussyCat supposed to do if she was specifically advised to go to A&E? With something like a Bartholin's cyst, it would be ridiculous to make people wait a week or more for a GP appointment.

When I had a cyst under my arm, I too was sent by Minor Injuries to A&E. I queried whether it was really necessary, and was very apologetic when I got to A&E. However, they confirmed it was absolutely the right place for me to be, as the cyst needed to be dealt with in appropriately sterile conditions without delay to avoid the danger of infection spreading. I was referred on within an hour or so to a ward where they drained and dressed it, gave me antibiotics and sent me on my way, feeling a hell of a lot better.

If you live abroad, it is really ridiculous to claim you know more about the NHS than people who actually deal with the NHS. I suspect the reason visits take a long time where you are is precisely because it's private medicine - it's notorious that, particularly when insurance companies are paying, hospitals order every test under the sun irrespective of whether they are necessary or not.

How was she wasting time, have you ever had a cyst? I have had many cysts including Bartholins cysts. The first time I was in agony, I thought I had thrush for a few days then fainted and in a lot of pain, it turned out the cysts was infected and according to the dr the size of an apple. I was lucky I wasnt in the uk so saw a dr straight away and it was drained and put on antibiotics. That was the start of years of hell and eventually an operation.

The walk in centre if you can’t see a gp is absolutely the right thing to do. How the hell is @PinkSparklyPussyCat to know her symptoms aren’t serious, she’s not the medical professional and if one tells you to go to a&e you trust they know what they are talking about.

What an absolutely shameful thing to say

The NHS is...

Underfunded

Inefficient

Staffed by managers who aren't necessarily trained to make

Used unnecessarily by many people

Struggling around the interface with social case

Struggling to keep up with people's increased expectations/new treatments

At the whim of people's sense of entitlement generally

Struggling to shake off the idea that hospitals are the holy grail of treatment

Staffed by too-high a proportion of part-time staff who cost the same as a full time person to train/manage

Resistant to actually deal with problems relating to underperformance of employees

So huge and busy that most people have absolutely no idea about the sheer number of episodes of care that takes place and the true cost of providing these

... given all of the above it's a miracle such amazing things happen there!

Addiction is an illness your not above it all it takes is an injury when you end up on painkillers that gets out of hand. A mental breakdown that you try to handle with alcohol because waiting times for therapy are 2 years long. Maybe think a little bit of why people sometimes end up in these situations

Thanks for the laugh! MN, where someone can be openly and horribly racist and that's ok and not questioned, but you say you think drug users and drunks are a problem in A&E and you're called judgemental.

Yup, I do judge them. Fuck off out of A&E.

No same experience a&e or an ambulance everytime. I obviously turn down the ambulances.

@Oblomov25

You have hit the nail on the head

It absolutely is down to individuals making mistakes. Minor mistakes maybe. But the knock effect is huge to individual patients and to the NHS as a whole.
It wouldn't be tolerated in any other organisation so why is it when people's lives are at stake.

Another fault is the 111 service. In my experience, they have always told me to go to A&E when I know that's not necessarily. I think they are fearful of saying otherwise and need to cover their backs.
Maybe others have a different experience to me but that's been mine.
I'm not sure what use they really are.
Happy to be told otherwise

My job involves reading peoples medical records and the amount of records I read that say "left before treatment" (when they'd only been waiting about 1.5 hours)...what was the point of them coming to A and E then? Absolute wasted time for all concerned. So many health issues don't need to go through A and E.

And how embarrassing how judgemental you are

@PinkSparklyPussyCat

Was your condition urgent?

Did you try to get a GP appointment?

Having also worked in the NHS for years, and know the data on A&E use, it is NOT because of the "bloody immigrants". It's because of those turning up when it is very unnecessary and then kicking up a fuss so it takes nurses / doctors twice as long to deal with them. It's because of years and years of underfunding both of their service and wider health care services. It's because of the lack of support for primary care which is desperately needed. Because of the lack of forethought around training GP's.

How embarrassing that you've been so openly racist here. I feel saddened that you work for the NHS, a service in which many healthcare professionals are 'bloody immigrants'.

I think the drunk and the drug users are more of a problem.

You can only get this in some trusts.

In ours you can't and so are sent to wait in a&e.

Both DS and I have chronic conditions often requiring minor adjustments to meds or tubes, or for urgent bloods (which with the waiting timws would be actually quicker to get done by the GP). But we have no ward access, 24+ hours in a&e is a regular occurance.

In a&e here drunks and drug addicts are a huge problem, putting massive pressure on staff. All street drunks are lifted from town and brought to a&e to sober up, they fight with staff and constantly rush into treatment areas and drink the hand sanitiser, thus requiring treatment.

Drug addicts use a&e to sell and take drugs, its well known and has been published in the local news. They also end up overdosed and require treatment. And again rush into clinical areas en masse looking to steal meds. The security and police seem to be useless and know them by name, joking with them rather than sorting the issue.

It's scary to witness, I usually go to a&e alone as I'm usually 'well' and have been sent for a stupid reason that should be sorted in a clinic. But for sick and vulnerable people it's a disgrace.

Also here you can easily wait over 1 hour to be triaged, no matter what is wrong with you. Then every hour for the rest of your wait until you see a dr a nurse will come to the waiting room and take obs to ensure no one has died/deteriorated waiting to see a dr.

I can only assume two things from your post. Firstly that you work in an area with a diverse population and secondly that your knowledge of life in the UK is very narrow and limited. If you are working in a professional role in the NHS your point of view is reprehensible.

There may be some hospitals with a diverse demographic but that is not the case for the majority. I could sit in my local hospital for quite a few days before I saw anything other than a white face. My mother could sit in hers for possibly a week or two. When mother needed surgery last year (complex) she had to go to a London teaching hospital. It was very diverse from a staff and patient perspective but the care from every level was incomparable to what we experienced at our local hospitals. That care was provided by people of black, East and South Asian heritage. The anaesthetist was German.

Parts of this country have a high level of diversity. Most of it does not and people from the former are finding themselves increasingly uncomfortable in the latter. May I suggest, gently, that you reflect on what happened in Nazi Germany and started up 100 years ago. Auschwitz liberation anniversary was yesterday.

For the record, I am of immigrant stock. My maternal grandmother's family came as refugees from Ireland, my grandfather arrived her with his family from Russia aged 8, following 1917, my father from Germany in 1938.

Immigrants on the whole are providing the backbone of the hard and dirty work in this country and many have an excellent work ethic. Since 1999 all my cleaners have been immigrants. The indigent population is the bit that won't work in my experience.

The NHS would have ceased to exist all together if it wasn't for the immigrants that work in it! And they are getting sick of racist attitudes like yours! My dh came here 30 years ago as a junior Dr to work for the NHS, he's saying now that people like you make him feel unwelcome and perhaps he should leave. I hope you keep your nasty views to yourself at work.

they prioritise more urgent situations. you wouldn't be urgent for a splinter.

I think I agree with you

Did she go straight to A&E or ring 111?

Because I have rung 111 for advice/to get an OOH GP or dentist appointment and been sent to A&E. And because of how systems are connected felt I had to go so that be HV/school don’t get a note that it was advised that we take DS to hospital and didn’t turn up, even though it felt unnecessary.