To say stop moaning about A&E

YABU. Every single time We've been to A&E has been an emergency. The majority of experiences have been negative and several have risked DDs life. She has a congenital heart defect and has probably been blue lighted to A&E 20+ times

After her first surgery she kept turning blue and refusing to feed. In that period of time the longest between ambulance trips to A&E was 10 days. They kept fobbing me off and claiming she "just" had feeding difficulties. Wouldn't acknowledge that there is usually a reason for feeding difficulties. Wouldn't listen to me when I expressed concerns about heart failure because an inability to feed and blue spells are red flags and everybody was aware her first surgery had failed. Because DD would usually bring herself out of these episodes in the ambulance or in the A&E waiting room A&E staff point blank refused to do any form of cardiac assessment beyond her SATS. Which were always normal because she doesn't have a cyanotic heart defect so isn't meant to turn blue.

There was two incidents where the blueness didn't go away in the ambulance and DD ended up in resus. But because she eventually went pink A&E doctors fed back to the professionals around us that I was just anxious and traumatised and it's definitely feeding issues and her severe reflux. Which meant nobody else would explore why she was randomly turning blue because we were at A&E so much they understandably believed the doctors there.

Around 7 weeks post surgery we had a planned admission to hospital to fit an NG tube and train me. She was given an ECG and her heart was struggling. 8 weeks post surgery, the day she was due to be discharged she went grey and floppy while a nurse was holding her. She spent 4 weeks being stabilised in HDU before having her second emergency open heart surgery. My 15 week old baby wouldn't have gone through weeks of heart failure and suffering had A&E staff actually listened to me one one of the many many times she was rushed to A&E and admitted to a ward for "feeding issues" during the 8 weeks she was at home between surgeries.

Flash forward to a decade later. DD had really bad chest pain and went all pale. We took her to A&E. Granted she was triaged really quickly and they took it really seriously. BUT there were no beds in the paediatric assessment unit. Well no, that's not entirely accurate. There were beds but there weren't enough staff up there. No doubt due to funding. So my poor, terrified autistic 10 year old had to spend SIX HOURS in adult Majors, listening to a woman in crisis in the next cubicle scream, shout and kick the shared wall so hard it shook. Not to mention everything else going on in there. She had to cope with staff who weren't trained to work with children and who couldn't/didn't access her records so didn't know she has additional needs wouldn't listen to me explain this.

They wouldn't let me be her voice or even simplify the questions despite the fact DD becomes distressed in hospital settings when she can't understand what's going on. They wouldn't allow her to articulate what the issue was in a way she could do it. They expected her to explain it as a capable adult would. We did eventually manage to get her up to PAU but it took 6 hours.

I will complain about A&E because the very few positive/neutral experiences we've had don't erase the multiple times we've fallen victim to the shit show of medical misogyny, underfunding and understaffing combined. It was bad 10 years ago and it's even worse now.

Good for you but that wasn’t the experience that I had when I had to go to A&E a few years ago when I broke my foot. I was made to feel like a nuisance from the moment I got there I was wheeled out of X-Ray and left in a corridor and that’s where the doctor told me I had broken my foot and I would need an operation the next day. I was then taken to a room only to be left sat there in a wheelchair facing the bed I found out when I went to stand up to get on the bed that the breaks hadn’t been put on the next day I was taken to get a cast put on the doctor without any warning or offering of any pain relief just grabbed my foot and realigned my broken fibia and shouted at me for screaming in pain. The physio was the one who showed me my X-rays because I’d not seen them or even been told what exactly I had even done but she only told me about my ankle. They checked to make sure that I could get about with the crutches and they had a student nurse just wheel me outside A&E and leave me there. It was only after I had the cast taken off that I found out that I broke 4 bones in my foot and my ankle.

and its comments like this that show we just have no hope in society 🙄

I wouldn’t want to do the job these people do , day in and day out for the little pay and even less respect they get .

This is the government to blame not the people within the NHS on the frontline .

That’s a bit rude and out of order .

Whatever you’ve experienced isn’t the fault of anyone on this post .

Why did you go to a&e with a dislocation?
Urgent care is for dislocations and fractures!

People not using the appropriate service is why there are people waiting hours/days on a&e floors and corridors.

Tell that to all the people who have died on trolleys in A&E!
Seriously op, are you so stupid to think because you have never experienced something it doesn't exist?

I am a paramedic and have been working in front line emergency services for the past decade, regularly working with several A&E departments.

I, too, had a good experience in our local A&E with my child. We also had a quick, efficient experience when my husband needed A&E treatment. Many of my patients have had excellent treatment in this department.

In the same hospital, I have alerted patients with life threatening conditions to the resus room and been told to wait on the ambulance because there is no space inside. I have had patients deteriorate significantly on the back of my ambulance waiting for a space inside, despite me raising serious concerns with A&E staff, and once I physically wheeled them through the doors having refused to wait any longer, go into cardiac arrest and die. The outcome for these patients may have been different if the department had had the capacity to see and treat them when they arrived at the hospital rather than some time later.

My positive experiences at this hospital are negated by the awful experiences of some of my patients. You could have two different outcomes if you turned up at the same time on two nights of the same week.

I am truly glad you had a good experience at your local A&E, but that does not mean that other people ‘moaning’ about their experiences haven’t experienced woefully inadequate care. Have some compassion.

That’s truly truly horrendous. I’m so sorry

I hate OP posts like this because I don’t think people have any idea how truly awful A&E care can be, and it cheapens the lives listed due to that truly awful care.

That is absolutely horrific. I am so sorry that your DP died in such an unfair way.

I think it's the luck of the draw.

Last week my Mum had an accident, ambulance to A&E, no waiting, x-ray and broken bones plastered and everything patched up. We were in and out within 4 hours, was amazing.

Last month, same hospital A&E, my sister was left lying on the waiting room floor for 4 hours after being sent for a scan. She was so ill she was admitted and ended up staying in hospital for nearly 4 weeks. She was so ill, she couldn't even sit in the chair in the waiting room.

A&E was extremely busy when I went with my newborn a few nights ago, so yes a lot of people would have been waiting a long time - but they triage based on who needs help as soon as possible. As I was with a newborn, I was zoomed through much quicker.

They were absolutely fantastic and I have no complaints, I also haven’t had an issue the other 3 times I’ve been over the last few years.

My 80-year old mum was kept on an ambulance for six hours, then on a bay in A&E for 72 hours before being moved to a ward. At one point she was on that bay right next to an extremely aggressive man who was threatening all sorts. I was terrified, and I wasn’t an elderly bed-bound woman. It was like a war zone.

So, no, I’m not going to be grateful for the inhumane, substandard health service that we have in this country.

I’m glad you had a good experience, and of course it’s wonderful to feed that back to staff. This has not been my/DP’s experience. He had 4 heart attacks within 3 years; not once was he taken seriously, despite his medical history. For the 4th one they tried to send him home to “follow up” with his gp, despite his history. They only did a blood test for troponin because we both insisted we would not be leaving until it was done.

DP is dead now. He had an aneurysm (caused by another doctor, ironically) which A&E staff kept insisting was musculoskeletal pain. He went to A&E one last time, in appalling pain. They realised too late the aneurysm was leaking and didn’t even call me to tell me DP was dying (I couldn’t go in the ambulance as had to stay home w DC until someone could come to watch them).

Like a twat, I stopped off at the hospital M&S to get us some snacks on my way to him, which was our tradition. By the time I arrived, he had already lost consciousness and I had to infer from the fact he wasn’t being monitored any more and was hooked up to a syringe driver that he was dying. No one told me this at any point—after 2 hours I flagged down a doctor and asked. He was in pain and they did very little for pain relief despite repeated requests (syringe driver was morphine, which was on record as being ineffective in his case;I repeatedly raised this with staff) until 6 hours later when the (wonderful) palliative care consultant arrived and took over.

DP was my world; he was kind and good and was treated as though he was an unimportant, subhuman inconvenience by the majority of A&E staff he encountered, despite never once attending for anything less than a life-threatening condition. Across 3 different trusts, btw, so not a “local” problem. So yeah, I will “moan” about it.

I’m so glad when people tell me they’ve had a positive experience, but be aware that that doesn’t in any way disprove or cancel out the awful ones.

On this occasion although I realize the staff are massively overstretched one look at my ecg would have told her in writing I was having a heart attack so I do feel massively let down :/

My Dad was admitted after collapsing at home - paramedics thought he was in early heart failure and he was blue lit in. He sat on a hard chair in tears in A & E for 26 hours before being found a bed and then moving around 5 wards in 3 days. No one was co-ordinating his tests and the last ward he was on had a C Diff outbreak so visitors were banned. He was told alone that he was terminally ill with liver cancer and that yes, his heart was failing too. He died 4 months later.

I've never come across such apathetic uncaring staff in my life as we did in that hospital. It's a disgrace, and needs calling out on. Those staff are employed, and employed to care.

I had a heart attack in January waited 3 hours to be triaged was given my folded ecg to give to another hospital in an hours time for an ooh appointment and sent away it wasn't until I unfolded the ecg and Google the terminology printed on the ecg that I knew it was a heart attack, luckily when I got to my ooh the doctor had received my blood results and ecg and had an ambulance in 10 minutes taking me back to the original hospital, emergencies do get overlooked sometimes but that doesn't mean my experience would happen everywhere and neither would yours.

When you spend 16 hours in A & E with ‘suspected’ appendicitis and then get put into a temporary ward (bed with no pillow or blanket) for a further 24 until they finally take you seriously and remove your gangrenous appendix please come back and reaffirm that we should all be grateful and stop moaning.

Actually yes, I am grateful when people help me, even if they are paid to. Aren’t you?

And why do you need to express gratitude anyway?
Are people grateful when you do your job?
Hospital workers are paid to be there you know.

I am expressing gratitude.

Cobblers, you are trying to express moral superiority.

Was recently sent to "ambulatory care" (which is a clinic within A&E that GP's can refer you to) for suspected DVT.

Had my bloods taken within the hour, was then told to go off and have a coffee and return for results in another hour. Unfortunately blood test didn't clear me so I was given injectable blood thinners, and shown how to administrator the jab so I could do the second one at home. All within 3 hours.

All the while the staff apologised for the wait and said how busy they were.

(Didn't have DVT thankfully, had a full leg doppler scan the next day at 10am with an appointment at 11am in back in ambulatory care to discuss the results. Was on the bus home 10:45am with the all clear!!)

I realise this isn't A&E proper but only difference is it's for GP patients and not walk-ins. It was still very busy / no seats in waiting room etc but I cannot fault the care, the speed, the coordination of the various things I needed etc. Sent an email to head of the clinic to that effect.

I'm so sorry.

Minor injuries closes at 3. They deal with minors 8n A&E after that by having a quick and efficient triage system at which the nurse fixes a minor injury and you are in your way. About an hour for me this Friday. For what it’s worth I rang 111 for advice about my injury, expecting to be told what to do with it until minor injuries was next open but they told me to go to A&E so I did. Unless you arrive in an ambulance you have to be referred by 111 or another medical team, so nobody is there that medics don’t think needs attention.

Our minor injuries is only 9-5. Others are short hours. Xray is only part time.

@Darkcarpark, well the next time we’re in A and E, I’ll remember your story and make sure I keep my thoughts to myself.

When you get off your high horse, maybe consider visiting A and E majors or resus, I think you may change your tune.

Minors - like your son had, should be straight forward, X-ray and treat, job done. Unfortunately, for people like my 22 year old with complex health conditions, it’s very different.

The last visit he had, he was on a trolley for 48 hours waiting for a surgeon to replace his blocked feeding tube. His medication had to go through an IV and couldn’t have nutrition as he’s nil by mouth. Following the operation, he spent a week in hospital due to the infection caused by the delay.

The previous visit, was pneumonia and sepsis, where he was too frail for ICU so the long wait was due to finding a bed on a general ward.

We know he would have died both times had we not nursed him ourselves.

Be careful what you wish for, in a blink of an eye your future could change drastically.

So no, I won’t stop moaning when the NHS isn’t fit for purpose for anything other than minor ailments.