I get that a&e is busy, but was not expecting to be spoken to so rudely

Yes, the nurse was rude and probably shouldn't have spoken to you like that but also, could you do her job?

I know I couldn't.

A and E is under so much pressure. It sounds like she was having a bad day.

My advice would be that you ring your GP and ask in the morning what else you can do. Evenings and weekends are going to be busy in A and E, I'd have thought.

Not and accident or an emergency. You should have phoned 111 and taken advice from them. Probably have been sent to a walk in centre.

Absolutely ridiculous!
I’ve had something retrieved from my ear before by a nurse at my local GP surgery!
it was really far in, and she said it was touching my eardrum.
she was actually quite shocked it had gone in so far because of the size of it 🤣

A GP will not touch it apparently. My friend, who has been a GP for 31 yrs said he sends all cases like this to a&e when it is right next to the ear drum as they are the only people with specialist tools to remove it. A referral to ENT takes weeks.

Why did you let a complete stranger tell you what to do? Take responsibility for your own health and decisions.

Went to a&e tonight. I have a foreign object stuck in my ear. I did not know it was in there until someone looked last night before I left my house and said i should get it looked at. Wasn't able to go to a&e today as my son had his own medical appointment in another city that I have waited months for and we were in a hotel for last night. There was no way I was cancelling it for my own ailment.

The pain has got significantly worse. Have shooting pains into my jaw and cheek bone and my ear is making clicking noises. This is since about lunch time today. Went to a&e this evening and the triage nurse asked me how long it had been in my ear. I said I suspect a few weeks, but I thought I just had an earache and it went away after a while so thought it was gone. Got some new foam ear plugs last week (which obviously pushed the foreign body in further!) and am now suffering for it. I hadn't finished when she cut me off and said 'well I don't really understand why you have picked this evening to come to a&e' and told me I would be better off going to my GP. I am in some pain but ended up leaving because she just made me feel like I had done an awful thing by heading straight after my son's appointment. I spoke to 111 earlier in the day and they told me to go to a&e asap because I could risk my hearing and that whilst it isn't life threatening, it is both an accident and an emergency. I asked if I could wait until morning and they said no. This was the 111 dr not the triage staff. I have no idea if this is the correct advice.

AIBU to think I didn't do anything wrong? I told her a medical professional has looked at it (a friend of mine who is a dr of 30 years) and said it needs ent because of how far in it is and she actually rolled her eyes at me and said I should see an actual GP (I suspect by that she meant my own GP?) and that a&e were sending everyone to minor injuries and that cases like mine are the reason she now has a 6 hour waiting list.

Is this normal for a&e now? Is it so awful working there that being rude has just become the norm or do most people have a better bedside manner? I haven't been to a&e since I was a child and was really shocked by the way I was spoken to, after being advised to go there by 111 and a trusted friend who is a medical doctor (GP).

To add, she didn't look in my ear.

Would you have done anything different? Am I missing something?

Ah, OK. So the OP’s posts are shown in blue - if you go right to the top of the thread to the original post and scroll to the bottom, on the right hand side you’ll see ‘see all’. If you click on that you’ll see just the OP’s updates, so easier to scroll through. AIBU is a bit of a baptism of fire, but well done for navigating through this far.x

Thanks all. I have a pretty stressful job and manage to be polite to people much worse than me almost every day of the week!

As a nurse yeah she shouldn’t have been so rude but it was not a true emergency or accident given the fact it had been there a week. It could have absolutely waited until you could see your GP

Now think of your scenario over and over and over and OVER again every single day.

A&E is literally bursting at the seams

I am happy that you got the treatment that you deserved and I'm glad you're well.
Should I be treated differently because nothing shows up on a scan or you can't see it or hear what I do in my darkest of mental state ?

And yet in that two years I’ve received a cancer diagnosis via a routine mammogram, had surgery and adjuvant treatment and been declared cancer free. Excellent and timely treatment throughout and supported all the way, including aftercare. Problem is you can’t declare the whole NHS unfit for purpose because it isn’t. I don’t profess to know the answers, I can only speak from experience.