A&E experience 8 hours wait

[marshmallowmix]

Not been to A&E in a very long time....I am gobsmacked at what I saw. Liked we were into a war zone....

We waited 8 hours and gave up and went home at 5am as we had had no sleep and couldn't handle the wait time, we were sent after we saw the out of hours doctor at the hospital.

No update, so many people everywhere, place was not clean and had being patrolled by two security guards that looked like they had come form the Russian army...

Not a nice place to wait, so many people like it is madness....people sleeping on seats when did it get this bad.

We keep building little box flats near me 5 new developments which will add thousands to the area but the one hospital on its knees as is every other service but we keep building and no new hospitals/dentists/doctors/schools...

I despair at the utter state of the country... I knew it was bad but what I saw last night was horrific and eye opening....we are in serious decline much worse than I thought...the A&E visit just brought it all in to sharp focus...

I've since looked up the reviews of my A&E and they are terrible really terrible...it is very frightening to think when you are ill and vulnerable the standard of care and what is out there...🙁

Well of course the standard of care isn’t going to be there when they have no staff. Lots of people go to A&E that don’t need to and are a huge part of the problem. 8 hours is not a long wait for A&E, you were lucky.

Based on a wait time of 8-hours, I’d suggest you would’ve been better off served waiting for GP in the morning. If you had a serious condition, you’d not have been waiting for 8-hours. I went in with an illness recently and was seen within 1-hour for tests, and the rest was rapid. 8-hours and you should’ve been advised at triage to go somewhere else IMO.

I was very ill last year. I made 2 GP appointments, the first fobbed me off with physio, the second gave me abs for a UTI then phoned up saying I needed to take Potassium tablets and to go back if I was still unwell in a week. Days later I could hardly walk, was vomitting & hallucinating. The GP refused a home visit. With the help of 3 big men, I am not overweight my husband got me in the back of a station wagon and drove me to A&E. He went in and explained he needed help getting me out of the car. They came immediately with a stretcher, straight onto a bed and I was seen immediately. If it is life threatening you will be seen quickly. Hence the triage and long waits for things that are not emergencies. People abuse the system as well as it being short staffed.

@marshmallowmix what do you suggest we do to fix this, using the resources that we have now?

@LondonPapa we did not choose to go we were sent to A&E by the OOH doctor we were told no to wait....read the thread....we did no want to go we wanted to wait and try our GP today but the OOH doctor we saw at the hospital advised us not to wait...

I don't no what the answer is....am reeling today at what I witnessed last night/this morning

Not sure wtf half of you are on about. Talk about victim blaming! The OP’s partner was advised to attend by a GP!

People walk out of A&E all the time, and collapse walking home or die at home. Hell, plenty of people die or have a cardiac arrest in the waiting room whilst waiting to be seen. The emergency care system is on its knees, to the detriment of patients and staff. I had high hopes that Labour would start to turn this situation around, but there doesn’t seem to be the political will.

Last time i went to A&E i was in out and sorted in 4 hours that was about 3 months ago.

My quickest time was during lockdown time i was one of 4 in the waiting area i was seen to taken in to a cubical etc all in an hour.
If half the people just went because it is an A&E issue we would not have problems.

Wait until your actually being admitted then their is about a 30 hour wait for a bed my record was 42 hours waiting for a bed

People don't realise until they have the experience. 8 hours is pretty good for her state of it.

Totally agree OP. I'm sorry to hear you had such an awful time. I was left in a&e for several hours with sepsis and had it not been for a family member advocating for me I would have died there.

At this point I think we need to move to an insurance based model. And/or id happily pay for a private a&e!!!

Probably bc you were in a private hospital.

We need a system like in France, but eveyone wants to keep the NHS and at the same time people eat crap and drink too much alcohol and smoke and vape and then expect the NHS to pick up the pieces.

You were there 8 hours, imagine working there. The staff that work there don’t have any say in how it’s ran, they literally do their job and go home. They are dealing with drunk, violent people, people with mental health issues, police, people who are screaming in pain, people who don’t need to be there whilst being short staffed. The NHS literally don’t have the staff to fill postions. There’s also a job freeze at the minute so those that have qualified aren’t able to find jobs currently. My friend who is PA, which is a band 7 is working as HCA band 3 because she can’t get a job anywhere. People know the NHS is a mess but you need to direct your anger at the people that caused this mess not the people who are simply doing their jobs. Student nurses and other healthcare course applications have also declined, our local uni and many others have reduced the UCAS points to entice students to apply. People don’t want to work in healthcare anymore, can you really blame them? It’s only going to get worse.

But surely we can’t just accept this as the norm? I also attended A&E with my mum recently - sent there by paramedics who saw her at home and said easier for family to take her in (I know better now). And we waited 9 hours with her in pain. The service is shocking and no, I don’t blame the staff or this government. But we must do better as a country.

But what can we do to make things better? I asked op and they said they don’t know. Do you have any suggestions?

My neighbours husband suspected stroke sat in A&E for 32 hours. He was then admitted. After a week they said sorry but the delay in being seen meant the window when he should have been treated for a stroke had elapsed there was nothing that they could do.

People often say “you didn’t need to be in a&e”, yet people are specifically sent to a&e by medical practitioners. Sometimes they give up because the pain and exhaustion of trying to manage their current situation in a waiting room simply becomes too much.

The answer is let people actually leave when their discharged from wards to clear beds. Iv spent a lot of time in hospital. And they tell you about 8am your being discharged but don't let you leave until 6/7pm. Also more money needs going into adult social care their is a significant amount of people in hospital beds who are physically fit for discharge but waiting for a care home space or equipment or carers to be set up at home

They are usually waiting on medication from the pharmacist or the doctor needs to sign something off or waiting on transportation. I can gurantee they don’t won’t a patient there more than needed as another patient is already lined up for that bed. But that doesn’t really sort out the wait times in A&E, your suggestion frees beds on wards.

Yes but that is what TRIAGE is supposed to do… it’s clearly not being done properly!

Tbf, my mum had a schizophrenic episode recently ish, was hallucinating seeing dead people, all the fun stuff. Made every person in the waiting room extremely uncomfortable, pointing at people and saying it was so and so (usually a dead relative or friend) etc. She was in the waiting room at least 9 hours, my poor sister was having the worst day sat with her. Ended up being sectioned at like 1am

I went to A&E with my DD after using 111, having a call back from a nurse practitioner and being told to attend for a specified time.

We arrived at 9.30pm. We waited 1 hour for triage. Then we were taken through to majors. At 11pm a Registrar stood up and said 'I just want to update you about the state of play in A&E. We've already been through to tell all of the people in minors that they will not be seen, at all, tonight. Broken bones can wait. You are all here because you have medical conditions and your condition can fluctuate. There are two doctors on shift for the whole of A&E, paeds and a couple of other areas. As it stands, the wait time is going to be at least 7 hours. We don't have anyone in resus right now. If that red phone goes, none of you will be seen until we've sorted them, so the wait time will go up.

I am asking you that if anyone feels they are well enough to go home tonight, let us know. You can come back at 8am and there will be more staff. If you don't feel you are well enough to go home tonight, please feel free to stay, but be aware that it will be many hours until you are seen, by which time you could have had some sleep. Talk to the nurse if you are unsure which category you are in.'

So, DD1 was still in lots of pain, so we told the nurse that if they could get some decent pain relief on board, and the pain eased, then we would go home. They prescribed some medication. After 1 hour, I decided that although DD1 was in pain, she would be better to try and get some sleep and return at 8am.

At that point, the junior Dr said 'I need to get you an AMA form from the registrar.' I said that I wasn't leaving against medical advice - we'd been advised to go home if we could. They wanted me to sign a form to say that I took responsibility if DD1 contracted sepsis, went into kidney failure, lost 'an organ' or died. When I pointed out that the Registrar had literally said 'If you can go home, do', the Reg said 'I wasn't advising you to go home, I was saying you could go home. But if you go home, it's Against Medical Advice because I'm not taking responsibility for sending her home when I haven't examined her.'

So, we stayed. Because I wasn't signing a form that said I was taking responsibility for life changing illness or death. We were finally seen by a doctor at 8am, then transferred to the appropriate department, treated and left at 1pm.

Exactly so it needs to be higher priority for pharmacists and drs shouldn't be waiting until the end of their shift to do discharge paperwork. Of course it would reduce wait times in a&e it would mean their would be less patients in their to care for as they could actually be sent to wards a lot of people in a&e are waiting for a bed

@userI did a back shift in my children’s hospital assessment unit, I couldn’t believe some of the stuff the GP’s were sending in. They all should have been dealt with by the GP. None of them had a serious issue.

111 aswell their terrible for literally sending everyone