12-hour wait in A&E: is this the new normal?

[Pluvia]

I'm staying with a post-operative friend and had to take her to A&E at 2.30am this morning. There were ten ambulances and crews queued outside with engines running. The waiting room was 75% full. There was a 12-hour wait to see a doctor. We sat and waited beside a man with a broken arm who was in such pain that they put him on oromorph. He'd been waiting for nearly five hours when we left.

I checked the news, expecting there to have been a major RTA or similar, but could find nothing. Fortunately, once triaged, my friend was told it would be okay to go home and return to a minor injuries unit today. The very earliest she would otherwise have been seen was 9am, when a nurse practitioner would come on duty and might be qualified to carry out the procedure she needed. If it subsequently turned out that she needed to be seen by a doctor she would have had to wait — possibly till 2-3pm today.

Is this just how it is now? There's no point in blaming the Tories, I'm currently in Wales, where Labour has been running the health system for more than 20 years.

I think it depends on the hospital trust. A couple of weeks ago I had to take an elderly lady to A and E with a suspected broken wrist. We got sent to minor injury clinic in hospital and she was triaged, X rayed and seen by doctor within 3 hours.

I had to attend a Central London A&E last year after a fall. The initial triage was quite quick and I had X-rays within an hour of arriving.

After that though, I got moved to a smaller waiting area in A&E where the majority of the bays were completely empty. An occasional emergency call was heard over the PA but overall it felt very quiet and calm.

I still don't know how the hell I wasn't then seen for another 6 hours!

I was in agony too so had to keep asking if I was able to have some more painkillers and was eventually given oramorph (which did fuck all to be honest!).

I can only assume they were massively understaffed so weren't running at full capacity.

Oh, and when I went for a follow up fracture appointment and had more X-rays, it was discovered I had two fractures, not just the one they told me about!

12 hours really, unfortunately, doesn't surprise me.

DH had what turned out to be a perforated bowel, so a serious infection and likely sepsis and was triaged and put on an antibiotic drip within an hour of visiting A&E in 2019. I hope it would be the same for a life-threatening case now.

It was for my son he collapsed in February with Diabetic KetoneAcidosis we didn't know he was diabetic ,the ambulance arrived within minutes where they quickly established what was wrong ,stabilised he was rushed straight to A&E and through to resus,within an hour he was on critical care with all kinds of drips ect ,but it was life threatening .

That's good. Hope he's ok now @x2boys DH was discharged after a week on a drip and the perforation healed itself and didn't require surgery. Also got fully scanned and checked over for cancer etc which was great.

Certain days are busier than others. People assume that weekend nights are worse, but actually it tends to be Monday and Tuesday days, and friday afternoons that are some of the busiest

Seriously ill and injured people always take priority. If you are seriously ill, you won't be sitting in the waiting room for 12 hours. This is what A&E was designed for. Now, unfortunately you have a waiting room full of people with minor complaints because they can't get a GP appointment. If you can sit there eating, drinking, and laughing away like a lot of people do, you probably don't need to be in A&E. For some people it's like a day out.

Not my experience of A&E always get triaged within minutes. It will be completely dependent on how serious your injury/illness is.

For some people it's like a day out
Yep, definitely. They stand outside smoking and discussing how shit they think the staff are 😳

Where have you been the last 5 years or so? Standard waiting time.

Yep, it very regularly happens.

We went to paediatric A&E a while back for DS. It was a 12.5 hour wait, so even with an A&E that treated adults and children separately, it was a long wait. It was an emergency for DS so we were taken straight through, but when we left 14 hours later, there were still people waiting who were there when we arrived.

I'm always suspicious of the threads popping up blaming labour in Wales for this that and the other at the moment. We are heading to a general election and its easy to point hands at Wales and go "the tories aren't the only bad ones look at labour"

Parliament decides the overall budget for the Senedd to then divvy up in Wales. So if hospitals are understaffed and under resourced you can point at Labour and say "look they aren't doing any better than the Tories" but it's not really the full picture is it.

Bluntly if you turn up to A&E with something that can wait for minor injuries the next day you are going to wait a lot longer than the people with major injuries and emergencies. That doesn't mean a post op patient is wrong in going to A&E if they have concerns, but it doesn't mean it's wrong if you have to wait longer than other people as well.

If you want a better funded NHS so that the wait times are reduced then you need to look to the party setting the budget. And ultimately that's not coming from the Senedd it's coming from Parliament

Morriston is my local A&E, it covers a huge area and it frequently overwhelmed and their social media posts beg people not to turn up unless they absolutely have to. The local MIU otoh is nurse-led, well-staffed and you're usually in and out in under an hour and is a much better option, they can even x-ray and cast breaks there but people just go straight to A&E.

Last time I was there we saw a triage nurse within 5 minutes, who obviously fast tracked us as we were seen by a Doctor a few minutes later. The triage nurse was keeping up with arrivals pretty well so virtually no wait to get assessed, but the waiting room was packed.

I think it's hit and miss with A&E. My Dh went the other week as he was worried he had fractured his leg after a fall playing football. He went armed with snacks and books thinking he would be there most of the day, but was in, X-rayed, reviewed by a dr and back home all within 2 hours! Was amazed!

I waited 4 hours with my 7 year old who had clearly broken her leg and for most of that time was screaming and crying in agony, we werent offered pain relief until we were seen. Thank goodness there was a small childs waiting area within A&E or we wouldn't have got a seat. I was shocked by how chaotic and busy the department was, lots of older people who were obviously either very poorly or had injuries from falls & even a man who had been in a car accident, arrived by ambulance but was left in the waiting room - he had this blow up thing around his leg, clothes all cut off him and they were giving him liquid morphine. His pregnant partner was left standing as there were no seats left. He had been waiting a similar time to us when they eventually let us go through to triage.
As a mum of 4 I've been in A&E a few times but its definitely got so much worse in the last 12 months.

It doesn't help that 111 keep sending people to a and e. I was an anxious first time mum with pnd when my 8 month old ninja baby flung himself off the changing mat and landed in the laundry basket. He had a tiny red mark on his forehead from the edge of the basket. Now, I would have kissed him better and thought nothing of it but I rang 111 who directed me to a and e. As it was a weekday morning we were seen and discharged quickly but we really didn't need to be there.

Of course the other problem is that it's so hard to get an appointment with a GP these days and people get desperate.

Lastly there are a few people who are so lonely and desperate for sympathy that they go to a and e with minor problems or because they just want someone to listen to them and give them a cup of tea.

Not a&e but surgical assessment.

Last month I had a phone call from my GP as blood results had came back deranged. (Gallbladder attack). She had discussed this with the surgical consultant and I was to go straight to the surgical assessment unit. Got there about 3pm, triaged and seen quickly. More results came back around 6pm and I was to be admitted. I got a bed around 1am. This was because I had my 4 month old with me (EBF CMPA baby, emergency admission and no time to express ahead etc as I’ve never needed to do this before and illness came on out of nowhere, no history of this).

the next afternoon, my aunt (who had been with me since the initial assessment) had went downstairs to the hospital shop. She passed several people who had been sitting waiting on a bed from the night before.

The issue there is that many symptoms automatically give you an a&e outcome due to the processes or the algorithm. Overdoses are a good example of this, as are head injuries (your babies fall likely generated a head injury/a&e outcome for example).

I’d say that’s good these days. Dd is a frequent flyer and a few weeks ago was waiting a long time to be seen and then a 12 hour wait for a bed.

previously she went in with severe chest pain and I mean screaming with pain and being sick and breathless. She was high risk for a cardiac arrest due to a pre existing condition which I made them aware of and was still ten mins plus for triage.

My DD waited over 12 hours with sepsis. I went to reception repeatedly to say it was tracking and that she was going in and out of consciousness. They even had the sepsis posters in the waiting room. She ended up in hospital for a week. Lots of apologies when she was finally seen and a letter from the trust but it shouldn’t have happened. Plenty of people were seen and left before her. I noticed men in pain were offered pain relief while waiting but 2 women in pain were told to wait until they were seen. No sure if that’s standard too.

I took my bff to A&E last month as she had had D&V post chemo and hadn't kept water down for 48 hours by this point. We had the go faster Chemo yellow card which is supposed to mean you get seen quicker. To say she was ill was an understatement. The next 9 hours she spent on the hard waiting room chairs and they ran all her drips in the waiting room. I called the doctor over who had kindly seen us for a consult in a storage room when they ran the first drip as strangely it made her fingernails turn blue? My bff spoke to her consultant on the following Monday and he wanted her to go back as she needed to be admitted but she was in so much pain she couldn't face sitting on the chairs. Her next dose of chemo was cancelled as her bloods were so shocking. I'm seriously thinking of getting a padded camping chair so if this happens again at least she can sit comfortably.

The same with a partner with a spinal injury recently - he was seen immediately upon arrival. (Fortunately turned out to be much better than it could have been.)

It was the old normal before New Labour won in 1997. Long Conservative Governments always result in poorly funded and managed public services.

I actually think this is wishful thinking.

Dd waited around 7 hours to be seen with chest pain and shortness of breath and had multiple blood clots in her lungs and nearly died.

she has been back since with the same symptoms and waited similar times even though they know her history.

she’s waited over 12 hours on occasions when she’s been admitted so the medical staff felt she needed to be there.

Our hospital recently had someone die of a cardiac arrest in the car park outside a&e, he’d been and booked in and had waited for so long he’d given up and was going home. Died before he got back to his car.