To think 70% of people shouldn’t be in A&E

The thing is it’s easier for posters to blame the general public than admit that their is a problem with their precious NHS.

We should all grovel for crumbs and be jolly grateful for the opportunity to wait 12 hours in pain from a broken leg don’t you know.

I've spent many hours in A&E with my elderly mother, who was eventually admitted ( twice) and also with a poorly daughter. It was always rammed and most people looked really ill - overdoses, broken bones, falls etc. I've also seen some people who looked OK collapse and fall off their chairs and require emergency attention. Nobody goes to A&E for fun. Also most people are too ill to be on their own and they need a friend or relative with them to make sure they don't pass out etc, so it gets very crowded in there.

Completely unreasonable. DH and I would have been those people you refer to just five weeks ago. For your information he’d had a stroke, the tingling one side of his body was a major alarm to me, but we sat and chatted and walked into triage and out again, eating sherbet lemons and looking 100% fine.

All followed by a doctors examination, a CT scan, a stroke nurse visit, an MRI and an admission (all done outside the A&E waiting room).

How on earth do you know why people are presenting there?

I can only assume you are living in some sort of protective bubble away from what most of yhd rest of yhd populism is experiencing in primary access to healthcare.

I currently have a bad prolapse. It took me two attempts to even get a go appointment : 1st time I was 13th in the queue at the 8am Hunger Games style scrabble to get a go appointment - I was told all yhd appointments for the entire day were takeb

Nect day - 8am Hunger Games style phone call (bearing in mind my actual bladder is partially hanging outside of my body) - 17th in queue - nope, all appointments gone.

IF you’re lucky to get an appointment you have to hang around up till 5pm WITH YOUR PHONE ON YOU. Most people will struggle to do this (or even answer their phone on the Hunger Games appointment making call back - if you’re lucky enough for your GP to have a queue call back sustem) - during which time most peopld are going thd school run/trying to get to work. Abc oh no!!! You’ve been driving because you still have to get to work or get fired or still get your child to school or get labelled a shit parent - and then once again, YOU CANT GET AN APPOINTMENT.

Clearlg you’re incredibly coddled and cushioned and have no idea just how difficult it is to even see your GP these days.

as an aside - my Gp won’t allow any appointments except ON THE DAY appointments.

That’s amazing and that’s exactly how it should be to relive pressure on A&E and actually get people medical help quickly

DH once took someone to A&E on a Sunday morning. This person had fallen and had a head injury which was going to need stitches. A&E was busy and a call came in about a car crash. A senior doctor then appeared in the waiting room to triage the people waiting. Various people were told to leave and either see their GP on the Monday or to go to a pharmacist.

There are people who seem to turn up there mob handed. There will be one patient, plus a crew of ten plus others just hanging out, keeping them company. I'd say that's quite annoying.

Frankly if someone isn't in absolute agony they'd have to be a sadist to to sit there for twelve hours. But when they seem to have an audience with them it's a bit strange.

I was with someone in resus who nearly died and the waiting area was crammed full of people, chatting, going for a smoke every two minutes, there was about 35 of them. All there for one person!

They were having a great time, laughing etc. in a life threatening situation that did feel a little upsetting.

There are people who probably shouldn’t be there, but very much doubt it’s as many as 70% of patients booked in.

Some people seem to have a ‘family day out ‘ type mentality. That clogs up the waiting room with people who aren’t even there to be seen.

Ultimately it’s not possible to tell by looking, hence they are triaged first.

Lots of people do visit the NHs when they don’t need to (former GP receptionist- although I was a nice one). I hate to say it but it was the people with the most time on their hands - older retired people and stay at home mothers. If I ever got a person in FT work coming in for an emergency appointment I’d put them top of the queue as they’d have to be ill to take the time off IME.

Some definitely do this. The hospital my friend works at has the consultant doing triage and he’s not afraid of telling people it’s neither an accident nor an emergency!

I hate this attitude. Nobody sits in A&E for hours just for fun. It's not entitled to want to be seen by a doctor if you're unwell. Plenty of GP surgeries it's almost IMPOSSIBLE to get an appointment at. You call in the morning, by the time you get through all the urgent ones are gone and they don't pre-book. So what are you supposed to do? I have a friend who died of melanoma after first struggling to be seen at all and then being tolld (repeatedly) that it was a fungal infection and made to feel like he was "entitled" for wasting the doctor's time. By the time he was ill enough to be taken seriously it had already spread. He was 31 years old when he died and had a toddler. And I can guarantee you his was not a one-off. There will be plenty more like him, sadly. So you can keep your "entitled" comments to yourself thanks

I completely agree with this. They can weed out the crap quickly. I was a bit 🙄 when my friend recently accompanied her sister and brother in law to A&E. She is a retired nurse. She should know that it’s not a family outing!

I was in A&E recently with an injury that turned out to be a fracture - I'd not realised how serious it was before going to hospital. Sitting in the waiting room I'd have looked, to you, like one of the people that didn't need to be there. Appearances may not be accurate.

DS2, 7, had to go to A&E after he was sent home from school with the outer parts of his eyes and the whites of his eyes swollen to the point the irises were descended. Never seen anything like that before. Gave him Piriton in the meantime.

Called a pharmacist first, who said call the GP. Called the GP only for the system saying they didn’t have any appointments. Called 111 who told me the GP was closed and told me to take him to A&E, both hospitals 30 minutes from us not including traffic. DH took him and the receptionist said it was a 3-4 hour wait but sent them somewhere else to be seen and they were out in an hour.

Consider that some may be in the same situation because their GP is closed and unavailable.

Few want to spend hours waiting in a hospital especially if they have to travel a distance and find and pay for parking.

Access to primary care has become harder and harder in the UK. Getting a doctor's appointment is very hard. If you're worried or have been trying for days, what other choice do you have but a&e?

@OchAyeTheNo0 My friends daughter has just been in hospital for 3 days with a uti and was also sent to A&E. I had no idea that could be necessary but presumably it was as she was admitted so I wouldnt judge

That’s your opinion only and certainly not evidence based. You do not know everyone’s individual medical history so cannot possibly judge whether they need seen urgently or not. It absolutely IS a fair point and in many cases it’s not times wasters. No doubt you would think the lump in my breast shouldn’t have been urgently seen either.

There are a lot of people in this country now with no NI number. So, no GP, but A and E won't turn them away.
And they will get older and sicker.
This is what we should be worried about.

A sexual health clinic would see you to remove it. GP should have sent you there if they couldn’t deal with.

Caveat being depending what your local services are, not all clinics open at the weekend so timing (eg if it was a Friday evening) may have been a factor?

Where I live, the urgent care centre was closed down and merged with A&E. That’s not my fault 💁🏽‍♀️

And yet the house builders will almost certainly have been paying an NHS provision.

Wonder where it goes.

There was a time I agreed with you but as it stands it is impossible to get a GP appointment. The only way to be seen and have a chance of being taken seriously is A&E.

As a radiographer who covers ED I can confirm that yeah, many patients shouldn’t be there! Unfortunately the public see A&E as a walk in gp service & their idea of what is an emergency is very different to what ED is actually for!
I don’t know how we solve this! But GP services need to be the starting point.

We were A&E last week with DH had a reaction to a trace of Brazil nuts He didnt look ill, but his throat had closed up but could breath throuhgh his nose. They wanted him there just in case it got worse. He needed steroids.

Maybe she had some sepsis symptoms? UTI is a common one that can cause sepsis.