Broken arm, waiting list for operation full?

[Moniq123]

Hi all, I'm just wondering what you would do in this situation:
my SIL's husband has fractured his arm in 2 places after a roadside traffic accident, ambulance said to make your own way as they were too busy. Understandable so we bundled him up in the car and took him. Hospital was absolutely overwhelmed. Took them 6 hours to give him morphine by that point he was going in and out of consciousness from the pain. They said that he'll have an operation tomorrow morning. Doc has just come back and said actually, waiting list is full and he'll need to wait until Monday or Tuesday. I broke my arm in 2012 and was given morphine straight away and into theatre the next morning. I'm just so sad to see how the NHS has really become. They're so overwhelmed the government really needs to do something. They're sending him home I genuinely don't see him lasting until Monday/Tuesday from the pain I dont know how they'll be giving him morphine at home I really don't, he's screaming in pain. Its moments like these we wish we had health insurance

Ah sorry, misquote. My reply was to @canyoudtep

Thankyou all for your lovely comments. Some frightening comments on here! I also had an instance where my father was having a suspected heart attack and the ambulance said 35 minutes but never turned up. They are incredibly overwhelmed it's not the staff's fault it's the government not providing adequate funding and doctors/nurses being fed up and leaving the nhs. It's terrible and something needs to be done I'm considering private insurance for myself and DH and DS, just in case and it would give me peace of mind I think! My BIL is doing well now he's at home on pain killers and will be called when he can have surgery. Its just the agonising wait but once the doctors do see you they're brilliant.

I’m so sorry OP - just awful.

My 3 year old had very bad croup last month and was struggling to breathe. 111 sent an ambulance even though we said we could take him in the car, knowing about the shortages and delays. The ambulance never arrived. 45 minutes later we got a call asking if we still needed an ambulance as night staff are transferring over to the day and there would be a further delay. Luckily he was ok. I hate this government.

NHS Staff have been shouting this for ages and ages. No one really took us on because it didn’t really affect them or people didn’t understand how bad it was going to get. The NHS is broken and now it affects us all. Not sure what is going to change with this government and it’s hideous people in charge.

I’m so sorry for all that have been so badly affected on this thread. It’s horrid to read. I’m staff too but I’ve also had family let down. Staff are just done in and are leaving, not replaced, doing extra to help but have had enough now. The goodwill people have only lasts so long.

I really don’t see it getting better before it carries on ( it’s already started) being slowly drained and privatised.

All well and good for the people saying get private medical insurance but it usually doesn't cover pre existing conditions eg diabetes and related illness without massive premiums if at all. Plus as PP said, emergencies you'd still probably need the NHS.

I used to be proud of being a citizen of this country. No longer.

Just hope my ageing parents don't need emergency care any time soon. My mother was born the same year the NHS begin and she'll probably die when it stops functioning too.

Private healthcare tends to be less useful for emergency or acute care. There are relatively few icu departments.

When you say "the government must do something" about the position the NHS is in, it is in false hope. Te Conservative Party are in power and have been for a long while, and their agenda is to let the NHS fail until there is no option but to adopt the private model (with a small publicly-funded provision for the poorest of the poor).

This is where the Conservative party I tend us to end up. Not that I'm excusing the Labour Party in any way, as they've failed in their responsibility to provide an alternative....

Have you got any recommendations on who to try for a quote? I'm interested

I sat with my very poorly 86yr old DM in an ambulance waiting outside the hospital for 16 hrs before she was finally admitted last Wednesday.
She was wheeled into the hospital for X-rays & blood tests then wheeled back to the ambulance.
They even brought her meals out.
She was so uncomfortable lying on the hard ‘bed’ all that time.
There were 10 other ambulances also holding patients, each ambulance had two crew members monitoring their patient, so 11 ambulances & 22 crew members unable to go out & help people.
I’d read stories of course but it shocked me so much to experience it first hand.
It was no one at the hospitals fault, I have every sympathy for them working under such conditions.
I was told the bed shortage was because 30% of beds are currently blocked due to their being nowhere to send people who need care or rehab when discharged.
Social care is in as bad a state as the NHS.
It’s heartbreaking what the Tories have done to this country over the last 12 years.

I've had a very similar situation very recently - waited 5 days for surgery. The NHS is really struggling.

It is not thousands per year anymore.

That all depends on a number of factors, especially age. Read the small print as there are many exclusions to take into account.

Back in 2016 after a fall I broke my arm in 5 places. Made my own way to hospital. Waited hours.Was given a temporary cast and sent home to wait for telephone call to give me a date to come back for an operation. After waiting in agony for 5 days I complained to the patients charter? Can't remember the actual name. They got me an appointment for the following day.

Emergency operating lists at my hospital sometimes have 10 or more patients on.... and some of these operations can take several hours each.

We then have the issue of not having the appropriate post op care bed so the patient either doesn't get done, elective patients are cancelled so we can use those beds, or the patient stays in Recovery post op...... which means the Recovery nurses do a minimum of a 14.5hr hour shift as they can't go home.

Private healthcare won't help you in an emergency. So put the spotlight on your MPs to sort the crisis.

My recent experience of private healthcare was that actually it was the poor equivalent to it's matching service in the NHS.

Read what Americans deal with. If you are ill you are battling to persuade insurers to pay out for treatments. It's not a panacea,.not even for those who can afford it.

This happened to me in January last year. Completely shattered my elbow into fragments on a Thursday morning. A&E doc said he'd never seen it done so thoroughly. Surgery days later on the Monday. Those days waiting for surgery are something I'd never want to go through again.

Use the painkillers. Take laxatives or eat prunes to counteract the side effects (seriously don't ignore this bit).

Distraction and tons of sympathy. I binge watched episode after episode of a TV series. The relative who was looking after me made me keep moving around and come to the kitchen for all my meals to make sure I stayed in as good shape as possible.

He’ll be booked into the emergency list (CEPOD list), and is getting bumped down the priority list by more urgent cases (ruptured bowels, stabbings, car accidents etc). The CEPOD list is a rolling list of urgent cases, nobody is cancelled but you move up or down in order of priority as other cases are added.

Somebody has looked at tbf list and realised he is not going to make it to the top over the weekend. On Monday and Tuesday, when the hospital is fully staffed, they can squeeze him onto an elective list instead. That means he is operated on by a consultant, and only has to be nil by mouth for six hours, as posed to being starved all weekend in case he reaches the top of the emergency list.

I know it is a pain to wait, but this way he will probably get a more senior and specialist surgeon operating on him, and will not be starved for three days, so overall standard of care is likely to be better. He shouldn’t be left in pain - get the team to increase his meds.

Back when I trained, we used to just take people to theatre as soon as they came in, but that meant that junior surgeons were doing the majority of emergency operations in the middle of the night, and complications/deaths were higher (it’s called a CEPOD list because it was recommended by the Confidential Enquiry into Perio-Operative Deaths). This change, to doing non-lifesaving surgery in office hours with a consultant present, is a safety measure not a cost-cutting measure.

No argument from me about the ambulance delays though.

@Changechangychange I really appreciate that explanation. I don't know why it hasn't occurred to me before that in my case waiting until Monday for the special upper limb surgeon was preferable to emergency surgery earlier.

I broke my wrist pre Covid and needed surgery. I had to wait for a space on the Trauma Team's surgery list. Obviously if a serious RTA came in, this would be a priority over me. I waited about 4 days. I had an excellent surgeon and the outcome has been fantastic. Apart from a thin, silvery scar on my wrist, you would never know that I have had surgery.

My Dad had a fall resulting in a serious head injury where he was unconscious, bleeding and fitting on Saturday morning. Waited 1hr+ for an ambulance (we were so lucky an off duty nurse was there). Then waited 4 hrs in the ambulance outside A&E before he got to a corridor in A&E. After 12hrs he was in a cubicle in A&E. Nearly 36hrs after the accident he is still in A&E waiting for a bed. The poor NHS. 😢

Private healthcare wouldn't support emergency treatment which is what your relative needs. The issue here is that there has been an influx of more serious (higher clinical priority) cases. These will likely be older people with hip fractures who will have a high chance of dying if they are not operated on. Upper limb trauma can often be postponed for two or three days if major trauma is very busy.

There may also be a factor of waiting for a specific surgeon with specialist skills in upper limb. Whilst all ortho trauma surgeons can do most routine stuff, some is highly specialist and patients have much better outcomes with a sub specialist surgeon.

Is there a Trauma Coordinator at the hospital your relative went to? They can advise on pain relief and managing the injury in the meantime

mmmm... in 1997 DH broke his leg in 2 places & had to wait about 8 days for NHS surgery to line up the bones. He was kept in hospital all that time I suppose. They said a week wait would make no difference to how well it healed (and it didn't).

I had broken my foot in two places during second lockdown,
had to wait for an operation for days. Was told to take paracetamol for pain.

Operation under general anastatic. Metal plates fitted in my foot; scar is across the entire top of my foot. I was asked within an hour of coming round from anastatic to leave the hospital without having anyone to take me home or help me to get into my house which is difficult to access from the road if you can't walk up stairs. Literally noone cared, I had to bum shuffle up the stairs whilst trying to not have anything come close to freshly operated foot or faint.

Noone came to change my murky soaked through bandage / look after the wound post op for three weeks.
This is when I realised you better not ever get unwell or be reliant on treatment.