Walked out of A and E after 9 hours and only triage completed !!

[bumblebee1000]

Don't consider myself at all naive but haven't been anywhere near a hospital for any urgent treatment in over 30 years. Rang 111 yesterday due to constant headaches for almost a week, was advised to attend local hospital [london]. Queue out the door, after 7 hours was seen by a doctor for appx 1 minute who said they will want to do blood tests and possibly an mri scan, was told blood tests could be a further 5 hours, a scan possibly a further 7 to 9 hours so in total basically 24 hours. I couldn't wait so told nurse I was leaving and will follow up with GP and a wealthy old friend has offered to pay the £300 for the mri scan which is lovely. I was stunned to see so many people sleeping on floor and who had been there for hours before me. Then a man went beserk and grabbed a fire extinguisher and smashed in the windows of the reception area, coffe machine and a door, police already on site as were with a chap in hancuffs.....awful. I did notice that many names were called and nobody responded so assume they just left without informing anyone, I felt informing them of my departure, was the least I could do so time isn't wasted on no shows etc.

100% this. I understand people are doing as there advised but people do still need to use common sense

I don't know which London hospital you attended but ours was struggling yesterday. We were really busy in the afternoon when I did my walk round and the subsequent meeting confirmed long waits and a lot of patients waiting

I can understand why 111 sent you to hospital, the possibility of temporal arteritis or brain bleed. I’ve been sent to A&E twice over the years with these suspected. One headache was so bad I was given morphine, told to wait for a scan ( I was given a bed) then in the morning sent home without the scan as the headache had gone. The morphine obviously did its job. Several hundred pounds later the cause was found and treated privately.

Hope you find the cause.

I would have seemed fine too, and then I had emergency surgery on my spine 12 hours after going to a&e.

OP you’re getting a hard time here. You were triaged and referred to ED. That’s not your fault and you did as you should have. Sadly 111 is not run by clinicians (it would be nice if we had enough clinicians working in the hospitals 😂)- as I understand it they have a sort of flowchart which tells them what can be safely managed at home and what can’t. The truth is without clinical knowledge it can be very difficult to triage over the telephone quickly and so if there is any clinical uncertainty they will refer to the only place open out of hours which is ED.

With regards to the dr asking you to stay - again if that was their reccomendation you did nothing wrong by following that - I can’t see why people have a problem with this. It’s not up to individuals to decide whose problems deserve to be seen. People often look around a ED department and think people look “ok” but looks can be deceiving. As many have also pointed out the pressure on primary care and people not being able to be seen by GPs means that non urgent stuff does end up in ED sometimes.

Unfortunately the system is cracking and as someone who isn’t regularly involved in going to your hospital / GP you were unaware of this. I work in a hospital and you’re not the first person I’ve met who has been shocked by what the situation is like in some of our hospitals. The sad truth for those of working in it is that it’s not shocking anymore. Corridor care is becoming the norm and the environment you’re working in especially in ED is like a war zone. It’s frustrating and sad because you can’t give people the care they need.

hope you’re head feels better soon .

bumblebee1000 Amazing to find all these experts posting on here who know what’s causing your headache and that it’s not serious without seeing you or doing any tests! You did the right thing by following advice of the professionals and I hope you manage to get seen by someone soon.

My dh had a stent fitted a few months ago after a heart attack. All went well and he came home. A week or so later he had an uncomfortable feeling at the site but there was no way of seeing or talking anybody, gp or consultant, without going through a&e. Tried getting an appt with gp but they refused and said only a&e so he had to sit there for 10 hours waiting to be seen.
He eventually got an appt and was told it was normal as the stent bedded in which is something any of them could have explained without going through a&e.
He would be viewed as one who was wasting time being there when he didn’t need to be but it was the only way to get through the system!

Sounds like A&E wasn’t the place for you, a headache is neither an accident (and providing it’s not a thunderclap headache or the worst pain you’ve ever felt in your life) nor an emergency. Your GP is who you should have made an appointment with in the first time. You’re part of the problem.

Using your phone or eating doesn't mean its not an emergency the only people I'd expect not to be on their phone is people with a headache so severe they need to be in a&e

You don’t just have to mindlessly follow advice OP
i wouldn’t have gone

Agree

A&E is in such a state. I went, was told no Doctor could see me, my GP went mad, so I went back and was eventually put on a drip. My GP complained.

Sometimes headaches are a sign of something very urgent and serious. If an NHS 111 operator tells you to go into to A + E then that's the best thing to do. That happened to me and I was operated on very quickly.

Try telling that to the bloke who walked out of our a&e last year after waiting for 12 hours and died in the middle of the car park. He needed to be there, he needed to be seen.

yes I agree there probably are too many people who go to a&e but there are also people who need to be there who don’t go/leave. And the reason why there’s so many people in a&e will be linked to the lack of availability of GP appts. Healthcare in this country has nosedived terribly and we need to look at the real reasons for that (austerity measures, under funding, possibly population growth, possibly reducing nhs staff numbers due to pay and conditions) rather than blame individual service users.

Absolutely but I wouldn't expect that from a mild headache someone has already had for a week. I say this as someone with a history of brain bleeds.

111 has algorithms that they follow to the letter.

I have a heart problem and know that if I ring them I will be told to go to A & E. When I say I just need medical advice about talung a further dose of meds they grudgingly agree to a medic ringing me. A non-medic then rings and, after discussion, says I need a medic to ring ... who'd have thought! Medic eventually rings, dosage advice gven ... job done.
Many hours have passed.

So sorry to hear that OP.
You were in the right place, because health professionals told you to be there.
You need to be seen asap.
Quite a shock to see someone smashing windows with fire extinguishers!
We do really need someone who has a clue how to organise things in government now!
Come on Sunak, call those elections!

Lots of people I know refuse to go in to A&E now even though they really need to myself included. My BF sat on the hard chairs in A&E for 9 hours and was treated there (dripped) with complications after chemo. Her oncologist wanted her to go back the next day as he thought she should be admitted but she told him she felt too ill for another 9 hours on the chairs.

That isn't quite true.
Many people attend A&E and are capable of making decisions.
Sadly some people leave and end up in a much worse state.

The bottom line is that queues for A&E shouldn't be this long. No one should be waiting in hours long queues for medical treatment. It didn't used to be like this.

And sorry but I have accompanied a person with a migraine to A&E before. They triaged, got them in rather quickly and kept them monitored for a long amount of hours. It was an unbereable pain accompanied of light sensitivity.
They took it rather seriously to be honest.

At what point did OP say it was a 'mild' headache?

For all we know it could be the blinding white light type of headache which should be seen to immediately. Your history of brain bleeds does not make you an expert on headaches, especially those that you know nothing about other than 'headache for almost a week'.

OP, i hope everything is ok.

Also completely untrue. So thinking of things I’ve taken family members to a&e for which weren’t accident related and which the GP couldn’t or didn’t help with.

some chest pain and slight breathlessness. She waited hours and hours to be seen because her ecg when she was triaged was ok. Turned out my 21yo Dd had a pulmonary embolism and nearly died. Her GP wouldn’t have done a d dimer blood test and got the results back within 2 hrs showing she probably had a clot and needed a CT scan. They wouldn’t have been able to race her off for a CT scan and start treatment there and then which saved her life. Funnily enough she had been to her GP with the same symptoms a couple of weeks before and was told she was probably anxious.

severe lower back pain, feeling out of it, feeling hot. Turns out it was a severe kidney infection and she scored enough to be admitted for IV antibiotics. She had to wait over 24 hrs for a bed.

loosing fresh blood out back passage, significant amount. Now on a pathway to have that investigated and told to stop blood thinners immediately. Funnily enough she’s been telling the GP for two years she’s losing blood out her back passage (though never that much) and feels like she’s internally bleeding and they told her it couldn’t be true.

my 70yo dad feeling very unwell, waited for around 24 hrs in a&e, was admitted for SIX months as was so unwell!! He nearly died that day.

The op was simply following the medical advice she'd been given, from the official government/nhs helpline. Surly we should be able to trust official medical advice on these things?

When will people realise that the services offered aren't the same across the country!

Lots of places don't have walk in centres, minor injuries, walk in GP clinics, etc.

For many places in the UK it's a choice of GP or A&E, nothing more.

Last time I was in A&E, it took me a total of 18 hours to get a bed. I was in agony the entire time.

People always role out this crock of shit gem of a statement. There are many many many reasons why people go to A&E whilst still conscious and able to make rational decisions.