Health Anxiety clogging up A&E

[Influencerofcrap]

Im really pleased that finally someone within the NHS has come out and said this.

Having been treated myself in A&E, in the corridor (outside triage) due to lack of cubicles, I was genuinely shocked at the amount of patients that attended who shouldn’t have been there. I’m not talking about those that were genuinely ill and couldn’t see the GP and had no other choice but the ones that were clearly anxious about their health and symptoms that didn’t warrant an A&E visit. They were all sent on their way but it still was time that was taken away from those patients that genuinely needed help. I wonder what the answer is to this, because something has to change.

Health anxiety not emergencies clogging-up A&E

There needs to be a change to the eligibility criteria then. If a service only exists for those who are eligible, it doesn’t exist for those who aren’t.

Another one

I'm dying': Harrowing screams of a mother, 33, filmed by her family after doctors missed cancer THIRTY TIMES

A mother of four died after doctors missed 30 chances to diagnose her cervical cancer – claiming her agony was caused by anxiety.

• Jeannine Harvey was told the agonising pain she suffered for four months was due to 'anxiety'

this poor woman also told it’s all in her head. Stage 4 cancer

But if someone identifies as a woman, it doesn't matter if they have a penis right because they would believe they were being ignored because they are a woman. So someone with a penis would still include themselves as a woman for the purposes of a health gap. So it isn't a sex health gap, it's a gap based on whatever gender they think they are. Which also causes complications of care but that's another debate.

No, you did not avoid a sinus infection by taking antibiotics.
Neither should you visit your GP every time time you get a sinus infection, unless it is medically NECESSARY. It will, most definitely, not push you up any waiting list. If you have been told this by your consultant, then you are being misled. Secondary services will have no idea how many times you have visited your GP, unless the GP tells them, which they won’t unless part as a referral letter.
Patients are indeed not the problem, but behavior like this certainly adds to the problem.

I’m sorry it didn’t work for you. It works the most people.

No, a man is taken more seriously whether he dresses up as a woman or not

*Genuinely though what alternative is there if you need to see a doctor and cannot get into a GP

At my GP surgery they release online questionnaires at 8am and it's fastest finger first to fill one in. If you do fill one in they are good at getting you an appointment but if you go online past 8.05am then too late the allotted online forms for the day are all gone*

So at 8.05, you get in your car and drive to A&E?

I occasionally have health anxiety, and I chatted about it from a mental health point of view with my GP because the guilt of taking up an appointment is huge. GP told me to always call 111 if I wasn't sure. They work out whether I need GP tomorrow, out of hours GP now, or hospital. I've been asked some stupid things (including if I could be on my period when I was calling for suspected miscarriage 🙄) but they're generally good and help me to work out if I need the NHS or not.

Has anyone ever questioned the effects of over promotion of various health conditions by charities and the NHS itself in creating 'the worried well' apart from Margaret McCartney in her book 'The Patient Paradox: Why Sexed Up Medicine is Bad for Your Health'?

This book was published in 2012.

And yet still no one is questioning why 'everything is cancer' as a concept in the heads of people.

People have literally been told to seek a doctor for a head ache because it MIGHT be a symptom of brain cancer, and then theres bewilderment when people actually do go and see the doctor for head ache like the campaign wanted.

It takes approximately 10 years to train a gp and 3 to train a nurse.

I suspect that relying on nurses more would have a disastrous impact on the NHS.

If nurses are being required to do a dr’s job who then does the nursing?

@Obscurial You've clearly never been a manager in a hospital then. It's a constant cycle of change, it never stops. And most people at a managerial level have done those jobs throughout the organisation - in my Trust I'd say 95%+ of our senior managers started as nurses/social workers.

Also interesting that you wouldn't Trust 'her' with a goldfish... the health minister is currently a man.

You obviously dont know much about chronic sinus and rhinitis conditions, part of the management of them is making sure any infection is treated urgently, normally with a 2 week course of anti biotics, sometimes steroids.

Not to mention that although I do seek the appropriate health care advice, despite being pushed from pillar to post, at work if I miss work due to ongoing issues I am asked what Im doing about it and when Ive sought medical intervention. A reply of 'nothing Im waiting for it to go away, usually takes a few months' or ' pharmacist wont see me due to complex sinus history' wont cut it when Im referred to occupational health about missed time at work

@Roseyposey11 but I did.

The consultant and GP have both agreed that when I feel that way I need to go to the GP.

But you know better and I should instead let myself get so unwell I go to A&E?

Maybe everyone should stop seeking medical advice at all and die, so the NHS has nobody to treat.

Very interesting post on a supposedly female website

hysteria etc

women’s health is already a joke and neglected and deals with serious inequality.

Endometriosis alone I heard so many stories of women suffering for like a decade before diagnosed and by then infertile.

its a know fact women, especially young women are taken less seriously and fobbed off as they are seen as more emotional and over reacting and are more likely to be told they are anxious. A quick google search shows many ways how this affects women who seek help and women’s healthcare

very sad

Interestingly, I was diagnosed with Health Anxiety by my GP.

Turns out it wasn’t anxiety, but an actual condition which would have been easily diagnosed, had I been given the appropriate tests. It is also treatable, several surgeries later and manageable as a chronic condition through prescription medicine.

Now I wonder if my GP is one of the same Doctors who are blaming patients with health anxiety for clogging up A&E? Would be rather convenient if it was…

@soupyspoon exactly. That's why I'm treated with "precautionary" antibiotics (but they're not actually; because the infection is always there, it just sometimes gets worse). Because I can't miss weeks of work because I'm just "waiting and seeing"

Your friend with the eye infection could be treated at a pharmacy

I think transwoman would take great offence to being called, 'men who dress as women'. And by that token a trans man with a uterus should get great care because he's a man. Women aren't treated poorly because of their sex, they're treated poorly in health care because of their gender.

My cancer was “health anxiety” for a while number of visits to the gp and a&e and once it was on as health anxiety no one took me seriously. It took a private dr, who listened to everything I had to say, all the symptoms and didn’t come in with any prejudice about health anxiety to take me seriously, order the biopsies and then wrote a very satisfying letter letting the gp know I wasn’t anxious, I just had cancer.

A lot of people cannot get GP appts timely enough. Something simple like a UTI can get nasty really fast for the young, pregnant or elderly and with GPs not seeing people fast enough there’s a real risk to waiting. My grandparent got sepsis from a UTI her GP did not treat in time. The stories about people dying of treatable things because they can’t get appts definitely have not helped. My own friend died of cancer because they could never get a Drs appt and were presenting with a chest infection and didn’t get diagnosed until a&e (put it off because of not wanting people to judge them for ‘wasting time.’)
If you aren’t a triage nurse it’s none of your business why people were there and this is a pointless thread. We all know why a&e is overbooked and the issue starts with local GPs.

I blame Dr Google. Everyone is an “expert” now and constantly challenge the medical profession. So much so that they are compelled to leave no stone unturned which takes up an immense amount of time. They no longer rely on common sense and intuition, proudly ending hours of tests and consultation time with a “ ta dah, there is nothing wrong with you”. The fear of litigation means that they are forced to carry out every test available.
There is nothing wrong with fully investigating a perceived health problem and there is no doubt that some of the worried well are actually ill. But the vast majority are just well. However, with the wealth of symptom checkers many present with all the right answers to the questions thoroughly clouding diagnosis.
My DH has been complaining of tooth ache for the last two days, culminating with him handing me a filling that had dropped out as we left the Opticians’s ( eye tests today). Fortunately we were just round the corner from the dentist, and even more fortunately he is married to his dentist. We popped into the surgery and one of my colleagues took a quick look. Unfortunately it’s terminal and I will extract the tooth either tomorrow or Saturday.

DH is the exact opposite of worried well and refuses to see his GP unless he is on deaths door. He had a stroke a couple of years ago, he had had, what we now know, a few tias on the lead up but had refused to see his GP ( I tried honestly). Fortunately, again, I was with him, identified the stroke and he was in A&E within the hour receiving treatment.
Not everyone has a wife or husband who is calm in a crisis so the slightest chest pain or head ache is treated like a life threatening problem leading to hours sat in an A&E waiting room.
The stroke advice is excellent, the vast majority of stroke victims present exactly as it describes. Meningitis is also well covered, I had to recite it to DS, who is at uni. He now knows what to do. We need more of these campaigns aimed at heart attacks and other common A&E necessary conditions. Equally we also need some well written advice about how to deal with common ailments that don’t need medical attention. Every household could do with some simple flow charts that give sensible advice. They would help save lives as well as reduce unnecessary clogging up of A&Es.
What we desperately need to bring back is a comprehensive out of hours GP service that the last Labour government phased out to save money. I think we can safely say that it did the exact opposite.

Health anxiety is a medical condition, but it is neither an accident nor an emergency

There’s a stepped care model that nhs talking therapies follow where common mental health problems inc anxiety disorders are treated

For step 1-3 the model works well - it’s underfunded and understaffed which is a separate issue but eligibility isn’t an issue as, everyone is eligible. Sometimes people will be assessed as a Lower step, decline as they want the higher step and say they were turned away.
we literally read that in peoples feedback forms that they ‘were told that they couldn’t have the service’ they could it’s just not what they wanted but services aren’t funded for people to choose the step that they want be we make decisions based on the evidence based

it’s like someone being referred to physio because they sprained their wrist but they wanting surgery, despite the physio being the most likely thing to help they deciding that they’re not going to have anything because they wanted surgery

I couldn’t tell you the number of clients who referred to our services who are better supported in a number of ways from other services who only hear that they aren’t eligible

not that we’re just not the best service for them at that time but for example if someone comes in drinking 2 L of vodka day we signpost them to drug and alcohol services to make it more manageable because they cannot engage in CBT when consuming that amount of alcohol but they will only hear that they weren’t eligible

people are often ineligible for very legitimate reasons, but their recollection is just we were told no

some people will tell you that they weren’t deemed bad enough to be offered help. there is a very very low threshold for offering support so if it’s been assessed that they could actually engage in self-help in the first instance, then they might be discharged but using the physio analogy there’s nothing wrong with that being the outcome,

that’s not to say that all services are perfect. I just know my service tries the absolute hardest to make services accessible to everyone and ensure people are getting the right support if we’re not the most suitable service.

i’ve just reread your comment to to check if I’ve tried to answer it, but actually, I’m not sure what you mean?

if someone comes to say a step 2&3 service for common mental health problems and they aren’t eligible they are either too sever so get stepped up or less severe (low threshold for this) so not meeting criteria and stepped down. Can’t have everyone eligible for the same service

also another example bout gps, like millions posts on mumsnet how users told it’s anxiety despite feeling crappy to horrible, but when posting their blood results other users find something wrong. Like obvious vitamin deficiencies/severe deficinecies. Thyroid. Like that one poster who’s vitamin d and iron level was close to 0. Or Like that poster who was told she was anxious, till she collapsed and turns out needed iron transfusions. Another who began having neurological symptoms, when her b12 was obviously severely deficient and needed injections. Then once levels corrected, that user improved significantly.

the very many users on here to only got diagnosed when they went private

As someone with both OCD and health anxiety, thank you for this post.

I don't go to the GP if I can help it, because MANY with health anxiety hate the idea of being told there is something wrong with them.

I was told Tuesday I had a WBC of 11.4, over normal. I went to the GP after suffering with dizziness for 3 weeks. As someone with health anxiety was I wrong for " wasting NHS resources "

Pack it in.