Health Anxiety clogging up A&E

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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

You can alway contact 111. You can always Google for advice regarding where to go for what. There are UTC all over the place. What are you not understanding?

I'm surprised if you had pneumonia that you weren't breathless. Obviously being breathless is something that may necessitate A& E..

We are talking about the aches and pains, the back pains for 6 months, the coughs and colds. See your nurse at the practice for a review!

What a shame people don’t get equitable treatment - ours seems to be very good. But our A&E covers such a massive area I suppose they have to be.

Being anxious about something doesn't mean it requires emergency treatment.

A&E literally means Accident and Emergency. If it's neither of those you see a GP or go to the pharmacy. Or call 111.

Patients who need emergency care shouldn't have that care delayed by someone who has a bit of a sniffle.

@LadyTangerine See your nurse at the practice for a review!

The point is, you can't!!!! Nobody wants to go to A&E, but there are no other options. Nobody is going for fun!

The nhs is a massive postcode lottery i don't think a lot of people realise the extent of this

This.

We all worry about our health but you can't just keep going to A&E to get checked. Well you can and people do, hence the12hr waits.

My experience working as a CBT therapist is that half my caseload is health anxiety these days. This started during but mainly after Covid.

Anecdotally it seems to be fuelled by a number of current external things (these are by no means the only factors and I'm setting aside the thinking and behaviour which is at the heart of it).

General information overload,
News articles focussing on the worse case scenario or health/mortality statistics
Dr Google
Social media diagnosis and the algorithms that send people down a rabbit hole
Lack of GP contact (though seeking reassurance all the time is a problem).
Private companies offering tests that will give you some kind of "result" for your money which is open to catastrophic misinterpretation (not that all private testing or monitoring is wrong or poor quality but it doesn't always help someone with HA).

Someone with HA genuinely needs help too but of course A&E is the wrong place to seek it. I would never minimise the distress of HA. Someone with HA believes that there is a catastrophic consequence at some point in the future of not checking/monitoring a symptom and will believe they must remain vigilant and monitor symptoms. The monitoring and bodily checking, researching, reassurance seeking (often in A&E) and safety behaviours keeps the problem going even though those activities seem essential or helpful or comforting in the short term. The difficulty is that someone may think the problem is that they are seriously ill whereas the problem is their anxiety but that will be difficult to accept if their HA has taken them as far as regular trips to A&E. They may even know they have HA but still the risk is too great of not following up because "this time could be it". It must be tricky for staff; how do they distinguish between those that should be in A&E and those that genuinely believe they should be in A&E until they've spent time and resources being sure.

I agree with others that the answer probably lies in having more accessible GPs who recognise HA and can provide patients with speedy referral to psychological help, but we all know that is unlikely to happen. HA isn't always easy to treat by any means and can have its roots in a traumatic experience and other things can be going on such as OCD. These are very distressing. But if there was timely help available it would make a difference I'm sure.

So many things are said to be ‘just anxiety’.

Like the person arriving with a heart rate of 180~200bpm who is told to calm down and labelled as having anxiety. (Actually that’s SVT).
Or me arriving in A&E (years ago) with a huge headache, extremely high BP. Again was told ‘it’s anxiety’. It was a reaction to a med I was taking. Just as well I was ‘health anxious’ and read the very long list with all the side effects…..

And then you simply have the fact that health anxiety IS anxiety and that you can see a GP or have counselling (tried myself. I self referred. A year on, I still haven’t had an appointment and seem to have dropped off the lost completely. Just as well I can go private hey…..

Telling someone Theyre just anxious and are a nuisance doesn’t help anyone.
Not the ones who have anxiety. Nor those who dint butbthen delay treatment because they’re worried they’ll be told it’s just anxiety.

Yes I'm quite sure I was dismissed as 'stressed overweight perimenopausal woman' for over a decade. Multiple Sclerosis was the cause of my odd symptoms. Not one fucker investigated my textbook MS symptoms until the day I finally saw a decent GP who sent me straight to the hospital. By then I was very seriously ill and barely able to walk.

Don't EVER assume it's 'health anxiety'. Don't EVER blame patients for our utterly broken health care service.

Editing to add: ironically I googled my symptoms, thought hmmm this sounds like MS - and never said to the GPs because they were exactly the type who sneered at patients for their 'health anxiety'. You couldn't make it up.

I think there should be a token fee charged like for prescriptions or dental issues. I think it would weed out some of the time wasters.

In my experience most elderly people only go to A&E when they really need it. It's the younger generations who are drama queens.

People are looking at this to black and white. What one person needs to go to a&e for another probably doesn't as its so dependent on past medical history, family history, medication. I'm on blood thinners and have a history of brain bleeds so severe headaches or head injury i have to go to a&e everytime as others without this history or medication wouldn't. I have pots so my hr can often go to 200 I wouldn't go to a&e for this but obviously others without pots would. So when your over hearing part of a story of why someone is in a&e be mindful that you don't know the actual reason.

We see it on here all the time. 'I've got a temp/bad back/constipation' and there is a cacophony of 'go to A&E' responses. It isn't a GP practice. There is always a nurse at the surgery, emergency gp appointment, 111. UTC.

Some people just think A&E is some kind of short cut.

Does the UK have online health providers yet for minor ailments? Can you just go to the pharamcy at Boots and get a prescription for something small? In the US we do this online, and it is such a help for busy working parents who can't easily make/get appointments. They can prescribe antibiotics for minor ailments, chest infections, conjunctivitis etc. That would take the pressure off the GPs somewhat i'd hope.

Separately I had a family member in the UK who was elderly and lonely, and he was never out of his GPs office. I assume health anxiety, but also he used to relentlessly google symptoms, constantly make appointments (back when they actually existed). His doctors rightfully must have hated him. It is so hard though, because what he needed was mental help most likely, not a GP. People like that do massively clog up the system and there needs to be a better way of handling it.

You didn’t ‘stave off’ a sinus infection because you pushed for antibiotics. You probably were given unnecessary antibiotics because the Dr gave in, because you were a pain and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
You may know your own body, but unless you are medically qualified to make that decision, then behaving like this is probably adding to the burden.

Exactly this. I have a serious chronic illness which could easily become life threatening if not treated urgently. I appear healthy. I’m young. I’m sure if OP overheard my complaints in A&E she’d assume hers were more valid.

Have you a cracked tooth? I had 20 years of sinus issues on one side, the same side as a tooth with a hairline crack. When I eventually got a root canal my sinus miraculously disappeared. I think there was a chronic but mild infection bubbling away under the tooth, never got bad enough to be an abscess or anything, but it gave me 20 years of sinus misery.

@YouOKHun and there is the fact some people with health anxiety DO HAVE genuine health issues. Issues that aren’t always straight forward to diagnose.

They know something is wrong and yet Theyre told it’s just their anxiety and Theyre been gaslight.
There has been a thread recently like that. The OP had anxiety, pushed to get seen privately and was send for urgent tests on the NHS. And yet her dh was still refusing to support her because you know anxiety. And posters right, left and center agreeing with him too….

Follow the advice you were presumably given the first time you saw your GP for the thing that makes you anxious. Follow that advice rather than brooding on what you think is wrong with you. Get some self-help books to give you strategies to deal with being unnecessarily anxious about something baseless.

But lots of people have serious chronic conditions. They are managed by speciality teams at hospitals and/or specialist nurses.

Lol
I had a serious issue a couple of months ago. Reception was telling me it was serious and I needed to see someone. Yep that’s why I called and?? No appointment . GP, nurse. Nothing.
And still they made me feel like it was my fault and my responsibility to somehow find one of the allusive slots…..

No, I avoided a raging sinus infection because I have had over 40 of them in the last 7 years and I know what causes one.

But yes, I am a woman in pain, so I am therefore a burden who should just sit quietly and not say a word.

The consultant even told me that every time I get an infection I should, at the very least, visit my GP. Because every record on my notes will get me pushed higher up the waiting list.

Patients are not the problem.

Phone 111?

I went to my GP three times with a painful breast lump over the course of seven years. Three different GPs told me it was health anxiety but the third one reluctantly referred me. The consultant I eventually saw told me it was health anxiety. My health anxiety was so high at that appointment, I insisted on a scan. Three weeks later, breast cancer was identified by a scan and biopsy. MRI scans showed it had spread to several lymph nodes during my seven-year period of “health anxiety” and for sure, during the two operations, six rounds of chemotherapy, five weeks of radiotherapy and 5 years 6 months of daily hormone tablets I can truly say I experienced health anxiety. To my shame, I attended A + E numerous times to be given intravenous fluids and attended A + E AGAIN with what turned out to be sepsis. These bloody women with their health anxiety. Where will it end?

Any time I have spoken to 111 they have told me to go to A+E

We dont have an UTC that you can access without it being arrnaged via 111, you cant just turn up, its connected to A+E

You should also know, in case it ever happens to you that you can have pneumonia without being incapacitated, its called walking pneumonia, something a HCP at my GP surgery had absolutely no knowledge of and didnt believe existed when I raised this with him about an issue I had.

See the nurse at the practice for a review? You cant be seen for any review at my surgery unless referred for by the GP, and guess what, I cant get a GP appointment