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.

My first place to go for a week long headache is a massage therapist!

Not necessarily underfunding, but poorly managed. There are far too many management tiers, and poor decisions on where money is directed. You could throw millions at the problem, and the problems would still be there. Better education needed on when actually to use A&E. far too many use it as a walk in GP service, and I’m afraid OP your situation definitely didn’t warrant a trip there. Maybe more training for the NHS helpline if this is what they’re advising callers with week long headaches to do.

Sorry but this is a bullshit post. I had a broken jaw that needed fixing. I could have made a rational decision to not queue and leave.

111 advise a course of action based on presentation over the phone. Do they always over react - yes but the OP followed medical advice from the NHS

And some of the really sick people will die.

I find it strange that at no point do you mention attempting to see your GP. I suggest you give them a call this morning if you haven’t already.

£300 for an MRI seems too good to be true...

Aside from that, anyone heading to A&E needs to be prepared for a very long wait. We've been unfortunate and have had to go via A&E four times recently to access the care DD needed. I very quickly learned to take plenty of food with us and things to keep us entertained.

Even going in expecting a wait of 12+ hours it still feels like a form of torture and while you're there you'll have the added bonus of being exposed to a load of infectious illnesses while you're literally rubbing shoulders with the next patient as the chairs are so crammed in.

I would never go to A&E unless I absolutely had to. DD has an unhelpful habit of appearing to be quite well with her condition so people would definitely look at us and think we 'shouldn't be there'.

Urgent treatment centre or GP

Again, you are not an expert on OP's headache or symptoms.

Preparing to get chewed up and spat out but…… I’ve been an Rn for 40 years in Australia so have been around the health system for a long time in roles as an Rn on wards to Gp nurse to midwife in a private hospital ( currently working). I read these threads with interest as my daughter is married to an Englishman and England is home forever. When she was last home she had a small cyst on her eyelid which was obviously not urgent but unsightly and annoying. I asked why she had not had it looked at and she replied “..you don’t bother the Gp/ NHS for something so trivial”
I organised an optometrist appointment who organised a specialist eye surgeon to have it lanced within 24 hrs.
I just don’t get why people in the Uk want to continue with a free service when a
partial privatised system, as we have, allows you to be seen quickly and not at a huge cost.
Private Health is very affordable in Australia and many women can access private obstetrics and private hospitals which then takes the strain off the public system.
No health system is perfect but I feel ours is a good balance between an unsustainable free system and an unaffordable private system like the US.
I worry for my daughter and grandkids in the uk and living in a first world country it seems ridiculous.

A persistent headache for a week is at worst a brain tumour or a blood clot.

Both need scans. But you'd also have other symptoms.

If it was an emergency after triage you'd have been sent to the front of the queue.

You should have called your GP and insisted on an emergency appt if that's how you felt about it.

111 works on the basis of not being sued. Most of the people at the call centre are not medics they are admin and working by typing your symptoms into a computer. Some centres will have a trained doctor to advise. Otherwise, they just say A&E as a get-out.

I always thought that waiting times were shit but at least if you were in serious trouble they’d look after you.

my dad was in a + e in April - very poorly in significant pain with septic arthritis. he was left in a corridor mainly without pain relief and it was 15 hours before he started antibiotics.

it was absolutely appalling and I lost the grain of hope I had left that we had something to be proud of in our nhs

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.

I'm sure OP wouldn't have sat for twelve hours in A&E if the headache was mild and neither did she say it was.
Why do people make stuff up?

“ I just don’t get why people in the Uk want to continue with a free service when a
partial privatised system, as we have, allows you to be seen quickly and not at a huge cost. “

we have a partially privatised system in the form of dentistry. people are pulling their own teeth out with pliers - most people looking for a dentist can’t find an nhs one.

Really Maybe they leave people so long to see who actually needs seeing. The really sick people will stay the time wasters will walk.

What a really shit way to run a health service.

She wasn't blaming those 'at the coal face'. She was telling her experience like it is.

Pretty awful, but par for the course these days and not the fault of the NHS, most of whom do their level best. Still, as long as those in government can go private that's OK then, sod the rest of the population.

Good luck getting a GP appointment in 24 hours

Why do people make stuff up?

Because they need to tell us they have coped with far worse - they took their own appendix out on the kitchen table, doncha know 😁

My friend was so ill they wanted to go home, luckily their spouse refused badgered the team four times because they knew something was terribly wrong, hallucinations, loss of speech, managed to chase up a doctor twice. It was meningitis.

It seems to be the case

With headaches here it was GP to CT scan to results without any wait

This is why they triage, If you not an emergency and can wait, you will.
A&E wasnt the correct place

Last time I went to A&E it was 1pm on a Monday. I thought I had badly sprained my ankle on the Sunday so was taking painkillers and hobbling. Eventually went next day and they were asking people to go home and come back if they weren't too bad.

I was sitting on a chair looking healthy on my phone etc however I had broken my ankle so badly I needed surgery. I was home and plastered by 6pm. This was scotland though.

How come they were nowhere near as bad 14 years ago if it’s a management issue? You could still get a GP appointment, a dentist appointment and A&E wasn’t a 10 hour wait.

People are using A&E as a walk-in service because they can’t get appointments elsewhere - I have seen this happen to lots of people I know. My friend couldn’t get a dentist appointment anywhere so the pain continued to get worse until the point she had to go to A&E with an abscess. This is just the reality for thousands now. Yes there might be people who are going there as a first port of call but many many are not, they’re trying to use primary care but it is on its knees.

My FIL went to A&E the other week.

This was after a week of KNOWING he had an ear infection, but hoping it went away, it got to the point where he couldn't stand up. 12 hours overnight for all sorts of tests....to be sent home with antibiotics.

All because he didn't want to take time out from work to go to the GP.

I suspect there's a lot of people like my FIL there, those that have panicked as their normally manageable illness/pain has got worse, clogging up the system.

The doctors were very thorough, he DID have an MRI, but ultimately it was just an ear infection. But I can't help thinking, that if he'd gone to his GP there would have been no need.

You're wrong.

Emergency departments are under so much pressure that even seriously ill patients are waiting hours. Some of them will have worse outcomes due to the delay and some die waiting.

There are not enough doctors, nurses or beds to cope with the number of very ill people going through the doors.

If you're in any fit state to make a rational decision to not queue and leave, then A&E isn't where you need to be....

this is a load of crap. My dh was in ED recently - sent by walk in centre as his blood pressure was over 220. He was triaged within an hour but still waited 14 hours to see a doctor and be given medication. He could easily have walked out - he felt ok but he was at risk of having a stroke any minute!

10 years ago I went to A and E as I felt so ill after recent surgery. I had to lie on the floor as I was so ill I couldn’t physically sit on the floor. I was triaged and had bloods taken and hours and hours later I told my husband to take me home. I couldn’t take it any more lying on the floor. ED phoned me about 12 hours after that to admit me due to my lft results. I spent 2 weeks in hospital. Turned out the surgeon had sliced my liver during the operation.