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.

I mean, it is absolutely WAS your choice. They're not forcing you there at gunpoint.

111 advised me to give my mum paracetamol when I rang them because she was in severe pain. Thankfully I ignored them and got her to A&E where she was diagnosed with a perforated bowel and advanced bowel cancer.

When you ring 111 you are ringing a call centre staffed by trained (to a degree) operators. You are not speaking with qualified professionals.

I really believe that there are so many people in A and E because it's very difficult to get a GP appointment so people go to the local hospital after 111 advice or because they are worried or because they have deteriorated because they haven't seen their GP. Walk in centres have all closed where I live and it's not easy to get a GP appointment. Its very scary when you are unwell and there doesn't seem to be anywhere to turn. There seems to be lots more people in my local pharmacy waiting for advice, they have a consultation room, but I'm not sure how much that helps. Really what's needed is more doctors.

It is great you were able to diagnose other people there. Perhaps you could have helped clear the waiting room. 🙄 Meanwhile I guess people were looking at you wondering why you were there too.

Blimey, so many comments here about 'only a headache'.
I remember the time I was in absolute agony with the worst headache I have ever experienced. I called my late mother asking what I should do and she could hear it in my voice that I was scared and told me to get to the hospital. I was also worried about causing a fuss so called 111 first and they told me to go to the local a&e. I remember literally holding my head and running into the hospital as soon as I arrived. It was dreadful. And I was so relieved to be taken seriously and successfully treated. On a later trip to my local GP, I remember the doctor ridiculing me for attending a&e for 'just a headache'. I've got a fairly high pain threshold and I just couldn't believe the attitude of some people who had no clue.

How have you arrived at that conclusion from an online comment?

Could you provide real life examples of costs? Here in the UK there are now many people who can barely afford housing costs, food is getting more and more expensive, many cannot afford a dentist even if they can find one. It is easy to make a blanket statement about the benefits of health insurance but some actual costings along with limitations and caveats for obtaining insurance would flesh out your argument.

Maybe because the OP herself was able to state that lots of people were there that didn't need urgent care without any medical qualifications.

Wow, where are you finding an MRI scan for £300? Hope you feel better OP!

My parents spent 11 hours in A&E for a persistent low level bleed due to medication. Hospital department that did operation - p/t said GP or A&E - GP refused to see said A&E - 111 said A&E - 3 pharmacists they consulted said A&E. Different department in hospital that prescribed medication causing issues said don't stop it but go o A&E.

My DP really didn't want to try A&E but in end did - 11 hours later they said they'd have to leave - no sleep no food and lack of some other medication - they tried to make them stay but the wait was too long and bleed had finally stopped.

Mention it on here and was told it's not an accident or an emergency why were they in A&E - because numerously HCP told them to go .

"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...."

Dh was told to go to A and E because of symptoms he developed after a chemo treatment. He left after 6 hours because he was too tired to sit on chair (kept dropping off and sliding off the chair. He said it was a choice between leaving or lying on the floor.

My husband is from a different country with a paid for health service and he really struggles with the wait times in the UK and doesn't understand that you can't just walk in and be seen.
I have explained that it's Accident & Emergency so unless you are literally dying, then you are going to take a really long time to be seen as anything more serious that happens .
He recently had shortness of breathe in the middle of the night and was struggling to breathe, it was really horrible but the more he panicked the worse he got and he couldn't calm himself down so wanted to go to A&E.
I managed to convince him to call 111 first and he was triaged and advised to go to the hospital for an out of hours GP appointment in the middle of the night and he had his breathing and blood oxygen checked and GP wasn't happy as his breathing wasn't normal so said he needed to be triaged to A&E.
But he walked out after about 9 hours of waiting too with no end in sight as he just felt like it wasn't going to get better even with waiting.
He was back to normal after a few days but it wasn't nice for that time and I think he felt really scared that something serious was wrong and needed some reassurance and felt let down that he didn't get it.
I felt really bad for him but I have family and friends with breathing issues so I knew he wasn't dying, just obviously had a horrible breathing problem at that point for some reason.
It's just the reality of the system right now.

I wonder what the statistics are for patients who either die in A&E , in an ambulance queued or at home waiting for help.

A woman did die recently in our A&E I only know because it was a neighbours relative.

A study found there was likely an excess death for every 72 patients who spent eight to 12 hours in A&E. Nurses say the "crisis" is "taking lives". More than 250 patients a week in England may have died unnecessarily last year due to very long waits for a bed in A&E, new estimates suggest.

Sky News:A&E waits: Hundreds of patients a week in England may have died unnecessarily

At one point Wales was boasting about having better A&E wait times - then it emerged that they were not including all of them https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67056279#:~:text=The%20true%20picture%20of%20A%26E,raising%20the%20issue%20for%20months. NHS Wales: Thousands of hours missing from A&E figures - doctors - I heard out going First Minister claiming reason why the minimum waiting times had in over 20 years never been met was saying it was down to drunks in radio 4 interview - as if that was sole issue and not a problem England faced.

This is not true. People have died after leaving A and E because the wait is too long.

A&E is horrendous at the minute. I recently sat in there for 12 hours with my 86 year old relative who who cellulitis spreading up his left arm. It was up his forearm when we arrived and past his elbow by the time he received any type of IV antibiotic. I thought he was going to die in the waiting room.

Love the way so many posters are finding fault with you instead of the people responsible for doing down the health service.

I hope you get sorted soon. It’s bad enough to be ill without a load of strangers picking you apart on MN

I felt really bad for him but I have family and friends with breathing issues so I knew he wasn't dying, just obviously had a horrible breathing problem at that point for some reason.

This stood out to me because - until that point in the post - all the previous description sounded exactly like my Mum recently. She was struggling to breathe - as an aside the soonest the GP would see her with that symptom was just over a week away.

She went to A&E, was fortunately seen within a few hours and then admitted with a double pulmonary embolism, kept in for a week because of the risk of the clot moving and causing more damage/fatality.

I don't agree that a horrible breathing problem is not life threatening. Of course, there may have been other factors in pp's case that added a less serious context to horrible breathing problems.

Oh sorry brain tumours tend to do that .

It's ridiculous and the mismanagement and lack of common sense within the NHS is a very real thing a lot of the time

Example - My daughter had oxygen levels of 80-88. She was extremely unwell. My car was quicker than the ambulance so I took her.

The children's A&E is on the other side of the building to main entrance. I got her into A&E to be told they couldn't see her, I needed to book her in at the main A&E first

I said okay, but she's extremely unwell. Her oxygen is actually low. The receptionist just repeated that. There was not a medical person in sight so I didn't know what to do, who to cry and scream at so she was seen to

I ran with her in my arms to the main A&E. The triage nurse took one look and rushed us into children's A&E through their back entrances

She didn't even take my bloody details! And told a nurse there to take them and send it through. So clearly she could've been seen there and there was no actual need for me to go all that way

She spent days in hospital with oxygen support.

Do the rest of the country's GP surgeries not have eConsult? Or is that just in my area? Where you input your symptoms into an online form on your GP Surgery's website and a doctor contacts you within 24 hours? I had to use it twice yesterday (once for me re: medication and a follow up to something for DC) and the one for me got a response 2 hours later in the form of an email from my doctor informing me of a prescription she'd sent to my usual pharmacy and DC's got an immediate response with info about a referral that had been done. No phone call needed. No appointment needed. The form took me 4 mins to complete. Multi choice answers so barely even had to type.

OP, you'll come to realise that 111 are completely useless! They allllllllways tell you to go to A&E or that you need an ambulance if you mention anything to do with headaches/bleeding/abdominal pain/or breathing issues - regardless of how mild any of the above may be. They're covering their arses legally, whilst screwing over the already-overstretched hospital staff

Actually I'm sure it's Meghan's fault.

Daisy the Welsh link isn't working

@Hollysberries you are mistaken. I was told, by a consultant haematologist for my inherited condition, that if I had any signs of a blood clot, I MUST go straight to A and E. Because I am high risk, and that’s where the scanners are.

I’d imagine that would be the same for a lots of other conditions. Because so much now depends on complicated diagnostic equipment which GPs don’t have at the surgery.

If you’d seen me in the waiting area on the 4 occasions I’ve attended with query DVT, I would have looked well, and I was reading a book. Pain in your leg does not necessarily prevent you from reading. But if I wasn’t diagnosed and treated, the DVT could travel to my lung and I could die of a PE.

111 sends people to A and E ( or other services, if available and more appropriate) because it is managing risk and based on the triage, they MIGHT have a condition which needs immediate attention.

Wales what a bloody fiddle I'm betsi cadwaladr

111 advise too many people to go to ED when that is not the best place for them. I have worked there and seen it first hand.
I would not have called 111 or gone to ED with your symptoms. I would have made an appointment with my GP. Most surgeries will fit you in if you call at 0800.