So I’m currently sitting in A & E and it’s been eye opening

[Stressedout150]

I’m sitting with my mother who is in here for chest pains. The wait to be triaged is 2 hours and 5 hours overall to be seen.

Here’s a few things I’ve noticed:

1. it’s sitting on the floor room only, and i happen to be sitting next to check in. So here’s what I’ve seen so far.

2. a lady coming in checking in for pain in her toe

3. a lady who was told it’s a 5 hour wait, and after been told that/ was then asked if the wait still applied to NHS staff- as she works for a hospital. She was told yes of course. The cheek of it

4. a chap who checked in his girlfriend due to a headache.

it goes on and on/ I’ve never seen anything like the cheek of some people and also the ridiculous shit people are here for. And even when told it’s a 5 hour waits, they seem quite happy to wait 5 hours for their toe to be assessed.

What the fuck is going on

Still a better system than in France where you’re now often triaged over the phone and frequently misdiagnosed as a result.

I do worry about people making assumptions as to whether people should go to A&E or not. My mum (in France) had an excruciating backache, was fobbed off by two GPs, triaged over the phone by emergency services which refused to come and help, and died with only my elderly father by her side of what I think was a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm - a medical emergency where every second counts. It’s one of the most painful deaths one can have. Yet her main symptom was a …. backache.

I was once mocked by a paramedic that people with appendicitis dont walk by themselves and that im wasting their time- until bloodtest results came back,and it showed i needed IV antibiotics needed surgery asap but needed antibiotics first overnight followed by surgery first thing in the morning. It is rather rude of you to sit there and judge someones head ache when you are there with a relative with chest pains. Either pain can be very serious.

Just be glad you have the luxury of a service that's "free at the point of delivery". In USA you'd have to pay/have medical insurance.

This is so true. I had occasion to go to a&e with a severe urinary infection. I'd been out clothes shopping almost collapsed but got myself there to be rushed straight through a&e and the staff were standing around a TV watching the world cup. Truly amazing. The place is usually like a madhouse. I had no idea it was the world Cup but got 5* treatment. You definitely have a point there.

To be fair to the NHS person, if not said elsewhere on thread, frontline NHS workers maybe prioritised- this is to support workforce and keep frontline workers well to work and care for others. So it was fair for them to ask, they may have needed to know if they were due on shift depending what their issue was, so they could let their team know/manage patients booked in.

I’m in Scotland so we don’t have minor treatment centres. It can take weeks to see a GP. Our local pharmacist is small, closes for lunch and often has long queues. If it’s weekend or a bank holiday then the GP shuts anyway. Some Fridays you are looking at four days before you can even phone for an appointment and even then it’s a rush at 0800 and the appointments vanish

you can phone 101 and wait in queues on the phone to be triaged - it can take hours

this is why A and E is nackered!!!!

My cousin's headache was an aneurysm.

Once took my 3 month old baby to A&E under the direction of my GP because she had a temperature of 41. While in the waiting room a whole family came in - from my deductions it seemed to be mum, dad, mum’s mum (nan), mums sister, child and I think two siblings. The child had a sore throat and the mum said at check in “I’ve had a look and i can see a lump on it, and you can’t be too careful with lumps can you, it could be cancer”. The child in question sat and ate a bag of crisps quite happily while waiting. The receptionist asked them to not have the whole family in the waiting room but there were various excuses about buses and taxis and ultimately they spent most of the time filtering in and out in various combinations while the child waited to be seen. It genuinely seemed like a family day out and all of the adults made various phone calls to other people to explain that they were in A&E and they all seemed to delight in the drama. I’m sure someone will come along to tell me that maybe the child did have cancer/maybe they had a rare condition/maybe the mum had health anxiety etc etc but my conclusion was and still is that they were taking the absolute piss.

Complete anecdata but my kids have all needed to attend A&E after accidents in school. Mostly fractured wrists ranging in severity from simple buckle fracture that needs a splint for a couple of weeks to a that needs plate/ pins and two surgeries job. If I exclude the being blue lighted for breathing difficulties as a baby then on average it’s .5 of a visit in non term time versus 2.5 in term time.

A proportion of children will also be away on holiday.

Viruses spread very quickly in schools - cramped settings, poor ventilation, pressure to attend when ill, susceptibility to secondary issues after viral infections.

You can't tell from a snippet what's an emergency and what isn't. But A and E misuse and general ability to tolerate or self-treat the slightest discomfort is a real thing. My friend who is an A and E doctor put it something like this:

"I have deliberately changed my attitude. Instead of feeling like they're wasting my time, I just tell myself, they're wasting their own time. If its neither an accident nor an emergency, we'll get to them when we get to them. Maybe in an hour. Maybe in ten hours. I don't know. Depends what happens. If they have ten hours to waste waiting, that's up to them. In this way, I am remaining saneish."

Not entirely rational because its still department resources, but she said this with such a straight face I laughed.

Our minor injuries dept is within A&E, you have to go to the same desk and sit in the same waiting area. Are you sure yours isn’t the same?

Where I live there’s no minor injuries unit, all the pharmacies shut at 8pm, our walk in GP centre closes at 10pm on a weekday or 8pm at the weekend but they can’t dispense medication and there’s no pharmacies open so if you need urgent treatment they will send you to A&E.

I recently went to A&E for a UTI that needed antibiotics as it was a Saturday night and no pharmacies open when I realised it was coming on. I’m pregnant and have a history of severe UTIs and other infections that require hospital treatment. The dr I saw agreed I needed to start antibiotics straight away. But while I was sat in A&E waiting to be seen I probably looked completely fine.

The issue is more there is inadequate provision for joined up out of hours care for more minor conditions that still need urgent attention to prevent them needing an A&E trip.

I would have much preferred to do something else with my Saturday night and would much prefer to have adequate facilities in my area to handle these sort of issues that must take up a lot of A&E time.

That’s not always how heart attacks work…

But also not understanding the terms Accident or Emergency!

I wish there was a government information campaign like the sort they had in the war, or in the past about road safety and Keep Britain Tidy etc, to hammer this home.

People need to be told what constitutes an emergency, and not to take the whole family along if they do need to go. As for GP appointments, I bet the same people bother the GP with trivial stuff too.

A & E nowadays needs more triage staff and seriously big bouncers to keep order.

I took a family member who is elderly but looked fit into A&E. They triaged him but sat him back in the waiting room. He looked healthy enough but I could tell he wasn’t his usual self. He was chatting away with people, 1 hour later was put in majors with sepsis and was really ill and about a week in hospital.

People with nothing to do and/or mental health issues. I’d rather boil my own head than sit in a&e unnecessarily.

Big toe needs minor injuries or a&e. Any others tape them to the next toe and take paracetamol

We are lucky to have a decent minor injuries 30 min away for ds broken bones /head injuries. I drive past the hospital 5 minutes from our house to get to it as he will be seen within 30 minutes unlike the 5-6 hour wait (kids room)at a&e.
I did have to go to a&e recently for suspected cauda equina and there is actually an emergency room within the a&e department. So lesser emergencies are in the main a&e on a 8-10 hour wait but in the emergency room I was seen in less than two hours. Unlike when I waited 8 hours for suspected appendicitis (it was a kidney infection)

I don’t understand why anyone goes there unless it’s an absolute emergency.

I thought the QEUH (major hubs) have minor injuries?

Also - I know it’s not the same everywhere but it’s not too bad to get a GP appointment near me, you can even email them and don’t have to wait in a phone queue. But because people cant see a GP at the exact time of their choosing, they rock up in A&E anyway.

I get so sick of these threads. It’s not any individuals fault that the NHS is on its knees. I recently had an a&e trip and guess who told me to go there? My GP! I was there for hours on end, and during that time I heard at least a third of the people turning up saying their GP had told them to go to a&e. When I was younger it was almost unheard of for a GP to tell someone to go to a&e unless they thought it was a truly dire situation. My suspicion now is that a lot of people are being referred to a&e by GP’s who are not willing/able to treat them. I was very reluctant to go to a&e but my GP was insistent that only a&e could rule out something serious and they were not willing to tell me otherwise.

What made me incredibly sad was seeing genuinely vulnerable people in a&e (regardless of why they were there) feeling confused and getting distressed. A poor man next to me was shivering and asked for a blanket only to be told “they don’t have any”. He was in a wheelchair and couldn’t walk so someone ended up giving him a jumper to wrap around him.

Or they’ve tried the Thursday and Friday to see a dr. Mines a nightmare ti get an appointment - I’m on the school run most mornings and all the appointments are gone by the time I can call.

Ha ha good one- she actually is still in there with a suspected heart attack, but nice of you to say

All very typical from my A and E days, people really houldnt be there unless its an actual accident or an emergency!
Patients need to be triaged on arrival, then directed to other more appropriate services as required. The answer is rarely A and E.