Woman dies whilst waiting to be seen at A&E

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-68243636

The poor woman- She had been waiting 7 hours before she was found unconscious then dies few days later.
Now they want to launch an investigation into this case - like doh?? Isn’t it obvious that because she wasn’t treated promptly, she died? Maybe recruit and pay staff more to avoid cases like this happening again? But no, they would rather waste money and put it into investigating it instead of fixing the blinding obvious issue here that A&Es are not coping.

bump

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/in_the_news/5004250-cant-believe-this-is-not-being-reported-more-widely?reply=132897128

It's awful. I was just saying to dh the other day how long will it be before people are being found dead waiting to be seen.

This is just awful and happening a lot more than people think. I’m in several complex health groups and we have members having the most appalling treatment (or lack of it) in A and E. One of the conditions I have - Addisons disease - requires time critical immediate medication to treat an adrenal crisis which is fatal if untreated and yes it’s a rare condition but it’s easily treatable with an injection of cheap hydrocortisone, there’s no reason people should be slipping unconscious because of it, and almost every day we’re seeing 2/3 people in the group of 8k wrongly triaged and denied life saving treatment when they genuinely need it because of lack of knowledge, lack of staff and lack of understanding. (It’s something I’m currently raising awareness about).

Just heartbreaking, terrible she was in A and E to get help, left to wait for hours and lost consciousness without anyone noticing.
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The fact that anyone should be left lying on the floor in A&E, unresponsive under a coat, for that length of time is absolutely abhorrent. Fucking hell. Having seen QMC A&E recently though I’m not surprised. Poor poor woman and her family.

Obviously it's a very tragic case and no one with a brain heamorrhage should be left waiting in A&E for 7 hrs , but its not completely "oh they waited in ED so they died". Firstly obviously some things are not treatable regardless of immediate medical intervention. It needs to be established if earlier intervention would have saved their life. But even if its blatantly obvious you still need to investigate?!You can't just be like "she was left for 7brs died, that's it". You need to look at where it went wrong. Was an appropriate history taken, was she monitored. If not why not. Was a Dr informed, why did the doctor not review. Why did she wait so long? It's fairly obvious you need to investigate what the fuck went wrongYes the NHS is understaffed and Ed waits are long but still something has gone massively wrong to leave a woman with brain heamorrhage to fall unconscious in a ED waiting room and that needs a thorough investigation

Straightforward manslaughter. Killed by neglect.

My colleague had to take her very elderly neighbour to a&e last week, suspected heart attack. She eventually handed him over to a nurse after an hour of waiting to be checked in.
he was brought home by another neighbour after waiting seven hours to be seen. He had had no water, nothing to eat and had wet himself. He messaged the neighbour and she collected him, he still hadn’t been assessed.

I can completely believe this. I was taken into hospital by ambulance last year due to very heavy bleeding.

Was placed in the small emergency wait room with a nurse and HcA. HCA run off her feet with another patient. The nurse wasn’t great tbh. I’d been prescribed medication to slow bleeding whilst waiting for gynae which wasn’t started.

Anyway after several hours I collapsed onto the floor in my area and was haemorhaging. Luckily another patient ( nurse herself) saw me and started screaming for help. Ended up in resus ( quickly followed by another patient who by chance also massively haemorrhaging). I honestly think if she hadn’t seen me I’m not sure I’d have made it.

Once stabilised the consultant in resus totally lost it and was screaming and shouting about the fact two patients had been left to heammoraghe (nurse had also incorrectly marked up I’d actually been given the medication). He had to be taken out by the gynae reg. It was total chaos. I was then left completely naked on the trolley ( freezing) until a lovely junior doctor who was going off shift found me. She was so kind and got warming blankets, wrapped me up and even stayed with me until my ward transfer (I think is gone into a state of shock - whole body shaking and I couldn’t speak).

It was a really terrifying experience and made me quite fearful of going into A&E on my own without anyone to advocate for me - looking back basically I was too unwell to ask for help or even I think recognise how ill
i was becoming.

Straightforward manslaughter. Killed by neglect

🙄 There's always one

So you know all the circumstances, the background, her medical history. You know for certain that had she been seen sooner she'd have survived as opposed to she'd have fallen unconscious elsewhere

Excellent. Hope youve been in touch with the family to give them the extent of your expert knowledge

It is scary. It could happen to any of us.

I absolutely agree that waiting times to see a doctor are horrific but I also think you need to explain your symptoms fully at triage.

If this lady did say she had just a headache then she would not have been bumped up the queue any quicker than the many timewasters that go to A&E.

The problem mostly lies in primary care where people can't be seen as they used to so go to A&E where they are guaranteed to see a doctor (eventually). So many people are turning up with problems that could be sorted at home.

Maybe urgent care needs to be open 24/7 or a doctor put on triage.

That is absolutely awful. I am so sorry this happened to you.

I could easily believe it.

We had a hideous A and E visit just after Xmas. Midweek too so not even a "friday night".

I was with a child and we waited 11 hours overnight with just a triage nurse seeing us after about an hour or so.

She's autistic and was in a crowded waiting room all night. We saw other people also struggling, man with a broken arm who did eventually get some pain relief which stopped the moaning but also wasn't seen overnight, an older person in a wheelchair waiting for a bed to be available who was there hours into the night and had been there hours that day. They were really uncomfortable and it was so sad that they'd been left like this.

The whole experience made me realise how understaffed and underfunded the NHS has got compared to pre covid.

I really really was shocked.

Brain haemorrhages are frequently survivable if treated early enough. A drug called nimodipine can be given to reduce the chances of brain tissue dying due to lack of oxygen. If the bleed has been caused by an aneurysm this can be surgically treated.

The hospital may well try and argue that this woman’s specific issue was too large a bleed to survive but seeing as she walked into a&e conscious I think they will have a hard time proving this. I’m not saying the hospital directors will end up on a corporate manslaughter charge but I do think the hospital will be paying out some significant compensation.

There was someone who died of a cardiac arrest in my local hospital’s carpark. He was in a&e with chest pain, was told he’d be waiting ten hours to be seen. Decided to leave and died about 50yds from the front door. He’d maybe have died even if he’d still been in the waiting room but why are people with severe chest pain waiting ten hours? I’ve had this with Dd who has been screaming with chest pain (she had a condition making her high risk for a cardiac arrest, which I’d told the nurse on reception) and was told to sit and wait. Was over 30 mins before she was triaged and I was expecting her to drop down dead any second.

Triage needs to be addressed so patients are prioritised more quickly and accurately.
Last time I went to A&E I had cholecystitis (inflammation of gallbladder) and in chronic pain but I wasn't triaged for four hours!! When I saw a doctor he apologised and said I should have been seen sooner.

patients with brain injury might not be fully able to describe their symptoms though. My dad had a brain bleed and could only tell us during it (despite being articulate usually) that his head “felt funny”. Had he been advocating for himself he wouldn’t have been able to articulate what was going on and could also have been sat waiting otherwise.

Was there a race element to this? Black womens pain is often downplayed in healthcare.

I had to take a friend in to that A&E very recently. I can easily see how someone could die in there.

It's Kubrickian in there. Endless corridors of patients on trolleys with the very barest of medical attention.

I was the only person looking after my very unwell friend when she was there. It was frightening. I'm not medically trained.

When I asked for a very small bit of help with her, I was threatened with having security called on me to escort me out.

@spidermonkeys - thank - you. I don’t think I’d fully realised quite how bad things had got until I experienced it. The poor HCA came and found me in resus and was crying and apologising to me.

It's a complete lack of investment in public services that creates the crisis we are now seeing.

What an ignorant post. Of course it needs to be investigated. We need to know what signs were missed (if any).

The vast majority of people with headaches presenting to the ED do not have a life-threatening condition and are safe to wait. We need to be able to identify those people so we can prioritize other life threatening problems like heart attacks.

We need to know what could have been done better here. If this poor woman had signs of the problem that killed her then waiting ten minutes would have been too long. It’s essential to discover if she should have been triaged differently.

£220,000 spent on rainbow badges. I wonder how many more NHS staff this could've funded instead?

Yes my mum had a lot of health issues towards the end of her life. (She was in her sixties no not elderly) I spent many hours at our local hospital and if I wasn't there to advocate for her there was a definite feeling that she would have just died and no one would have noticed.

When ds was 6 he cut his lip and chin open due to a nasty fall. Waited 10 hours in a&e he couldn't eat or drink was bleeding for hours. Not one person got seen in that time as there was no dr manning childrens a& e this was including a young screaming baby, a child with a broken ankle. And about 10 other kids . The doctor we eventually saw admitted he couldn't stitch it , rang another hospital for advice and booked us in there the next morning. He taped some gauze and said he was fine to eat and drink! We managed to get drinks via a straw but he couldn't eat at all. The hospital we went to the next day (an hour from our house and excellent) was obviously unimpressed with the lack of care. He has several scars across his chin and lip but thankfully his (adult teeth) survived it.

Recently my friend presented with severe burns and waited 10 hours to be seen only to not be treated correctly and referred to another hospital. Who advised her to complain about her experience to pals.

I drive past our local hospital to a minor injuries unit about 40 min from us now . And aside from life and death I'd sooner drive an hour to a better hospital.