Theories on why A&Es are quieter than normal ATM

[Hotcuppatea]

My sister works in a hospital and said that their A&E is empty at the moment. This echos the experience of a friend of mine who had to go to her local hospital's A&E and said she was the only person in there.

Now my cynical sister says that if COVID19 is keeping so many people away, then it just goes to show that loads of people were there before who didn't need to be.

I think it's about much more than that.

1. Pubs are closed and many A&E visits must be alcohol/ accidents from alcohol/fights from alcohol related.
2. No team sports at the moment- another big group must be the people who've hurt themselves playing Rugby, football, etc.

Anyone else have any theories?

In our a&e the regulars have stopped visiting and generally there are far fewer patients because they don't want to catch covid

This is definitely the main reason as this was noted before the schools closed and isolation began so I don't think fewer sports injuries etc really makes a significant difference.

We've also got far sicker patients coming through including children who might've been less poorly had they come in earlier.

Please use your emergency departments for genuine emergencies still. It's heartbreaking to see super sick peoples coming through and some illnesses eg heart attacks, strokes, appendicitis are time critical.

Another issue I forgot is lack of access to primary care. 111 aren't terribly helpful at the moment as they're so busy. Therefore some sicker patients are being told to isolate due to having a fever but they're then not coming in when they need help. Fevers are not exclusive to covid...

I think the NHS should make it clear how safe A&E is due to the measures they have put in place recently (temperature checks, no unnecessary visitors, shorter wait times etc), and emphasise that suspected covid cases are treated separately in a different department (if they still are). I think that could alleviate some of the concerns of the seriously ill who may be hesitant to visit.

Two weeks ago I went to bed feeling horribly out of sorts. Head fuzzy, chest aching, legs like jelly, heart beating so hard, tingling arms etc. Ngl for about an hour I didn't think my heart would make it through the night. It came on out of the blue and I felt sort of like myself again two days later. I took aspirin and a few days of bp tablets and hoped it would resolve itself. I refuse to step into a hospital right now. I'll make an appointment with the gp once this has settled down.

I think it's probably a mixture of fear and a lot not needing to be there in the first place. We had to take DC on Xmas day to a&e and we were the only ones in the entire department and it's usually full with around 100 patients waiting to be seen. So I've no idea why that was because if you are sick enough to need to be in a&e surely Christmas day doesn't stop you going

I injured my finger, potentially cracked a bone I don’t know but it seemed too minor to go in this climate. Now a month later it is still slightly swollen and has a hard lump where I hurt it. Wish I had just gone.

I went to A&E with ds almost exactly a month ago with a suspected broken finger from playing basketball at school. It was sore and swollen.
Now, I wouldn't take him, unless there was more to it, but would strap the finger up in the way they would at A&E and treat it as though it was.

That's one example. He wouldn't have done it, not being at school. But also that I can strap it up well enough, but it would be better to know if it was/wasn't broken but not essential.

I suspect, also, that people have been given the impression that the NHS is now only for Covid-19 and anything else would be wasting resources.

Re home DIY accidents, the DIY stores are closed so people can't buy the stuff they'd need to decorate or replace fittings or even gardening stuff. The tips are closed so even if they had the materials/tools, they couldn't get rid of the rubbish.

The mix of ailments in A&E varies massively. For example in the A&E where I work, the majority of attendances are GI bleeds, ?heart attack, COPD exasperation, frailty related issues etc (we have an old population). So very few RTAs and sports injuries.

Our concern is where the hell have all the patients with heart issues, GI bleeds, diabetes complications disappeared to! As someone said earlier, when they do come, they are much sicker which suggests they're delaying attending due to the concerns with the virus but there's still not even an 8th of the number of attends we would normally see!

Strange! Unless they all have these things still but are presenting with Covid primarily....

Agree with pp, the "accident" side will have reduced massively, and sadly the "emergency" cases might struggle to get an ambulance or even get through to the call handlers.

A girl I went to school with found her elderly neighbour dead in his house yesterday, she had been checking on him as she hadn't seen him going in or out. No idea why he died obviously, or whether it would have been different in normal circumstances, but it's very sad either way.

The message coming from the nhs is that they’re only interested in covid-19

Everything has been cancelled. You can’t go to the gp. Walk in clinics. Routine things have stopped - even my essential (and apparently unmissable ) monthly blood tests have stopped
I assumed there was no a+e provision either

Rather than being pleased that none of those people are coming in now, we should all be worried about where those people are, how they are and what on earth we're going to discover when the world gears back up again.

Yes.