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

I was taken to A&E by ambulance (called for by 111) due to chest pains (I have heart problems) and then just dumped in the main seating area. I was there 4 hours and no one checked up on me. An absolute joke but here we are. This is the nhs.

My friend’s brother went to A&E with a headache. He was turned away. Less than 2 years later he died of a brain tumour. Don’t be so quick to judge.

Could be dislocated/broken and agony for all you know.

Your mother's chest pain could be heartburn. There's no way to know. That's why we have A&E

Not true. My mum walked into A&E having had mild chest pain all weekend and it turned out she had had a heart attack.

Yep same. "It doesn't hurt enough to be appendicitis". Except it was and soon after ruptured

Yeah, my children only ever get the bugs that give them awful illness (they have asthma) in term time

They have also both had more than one a&e trip due to sporting injuries - again these sports stop in school holidays

Also - I live between two hospitals. One in a city (A&E is busy most of the year, quiet in the school holidays) and one in a very popular coastal resort (a&e is rammed in the school holidays)

Its fascinating how people want to blame all the patterns they see on individual agency and control rather than on other factors. And fascinating how it is a case or "I need to be at A&E, they are time wasting at A&E"

I'm not in the UK so genuinely curious here.

You've mentioned a few times about a broken toe not being an emergency. Is A&e in the UK not for accidents as well? Is it emergencies only now?

The NHS lady - I am not surprised she asked. I have spent the last few nights in hospital via a&e and saw 2 people get moved to wards faster because they have family working in the hospital.

I'm also another that had to go to a&e with headache before and wouldn't judge anyone based on an overheard one word summary of their condition to the receptionist.

IME NHS staff do wangle priority at A&E, especially if they work at the hospital. A friend was marched there by her consultant boss, and in and out in an hour, over a relatively minor issue she should have seen her GP about much earlier.

Headaches can need urgent attention.

People get to the end of their tether when they can't get GP appointments.

Some people will be time wasters, but no one wants to sit for hours on the floor of A&E. There will be something underlying their "need".

I've been embarrassed to be at A&E with something stupidly minor before. I'd called 111 for advice, and they'd insisted I needed to go straight to A&E. When "experts" are giving you advice like that, even if you don't agree, are you supposed to ignore it?

If people really don't belong there, the A&E system should manage that, but it's all so broken there's no alternative to offer people.

You have no idea what's wrong with her toe or how much pain she's in so mind your own business.

a and e is the only care available for some…

but more fundamentally, there just isn’t enough capacity. I was there last week and blocked a majors cubicle for 15 hours and a bed for another 24, with something that should have been sorted out within 8 hours max. Outcome worse for me and worse for everyone else too…

Again, you're assuming that every hospital has an out of hours GP, which isn't necessarily the case.

You only have to read this site to witness how A&E is abused 😱

This, I called an ambulance for my 7 year old son who was complaining of pain in his chest during the night and was crying struggling to breathe, it got to an hour waiting and I called back asking for an update and they said it was minimum an hour wait and it could be hours, I ended up driving him down to hospital myself!!

My ds was referred to A&E by his GP for “pins and needles” he could hear both staff and judgey hangers on taking the piss. What was he actually supposed to do when he had been refered? Say “some random woman thinks I shouldn’t be here so I’ll ignore my actual doctor who as examined me”? He had Guillain-Barré syndrome which can actually kill you fairly quickly if it reaches your diaphragm before you are admitted. It is entirely possible that his GP was being over cautious, just like chest pains are sometimes indigestion but it sensible to use your brain and follow medical advice rather than do nothing or use a service which don’t actually exist (such as minor injuries in many places) or 111 (which can’t refer you to a service which isn’t there and tends to operate on the side of caution and refer to a&e anyway rather than saying “a headache! A headache is never serious” or “broken toe? Can you still listen to music? Can you eat? No treatment necessary then”)

As for the toe, I dislocated a finger and waited until next say to go minor injuries when it reopened due entirely to threads like this and was properly told off for not going to A&E on the day, leaving permenant ligament damage, which needed a year's worth of physio and is still not right.

I don't know if a broken toe needs urgent attention (just as I didn't know that a dislocated finger does) but the A stands for accident...it doesn't need to be life threatening to qualify.

IME when you try and do the right thing by seeking advice from 111, they almost always seen you to A&E.

Same reason you can't even give GP appointments away on a sunny day in school summer holidays, or between christmas and new year. Better things to do.

maybe where you are. I can't even get an e- consult this summer

Also most of mine and my children's GP appointments are due to viral infections (they have asthma/I am immune suppressed) so of course we need to see them far more in the winter

We need more GPs. We need more physical spaces to treat people other than A&E (but they’ve been closed and sold off thanks to short sighted decision makers). Especially with new housing being built where existing housing is, but no more capacity.

However, we don’t treat doctors or nurses very well in this country (and it’s not just about pay).

furthermore, I keep saying people say “it could be more efficient if X”. That takes more admin staff. The NHS has one of the lowest ratios. And it shows.

we also have the lowest ratio of beds. Also shows.

This is what happens if you try and run a health service like a cheap supermarket

I’ve spent quite a lot of time in A&E recently with my son. At our local hospital there are two stages of triage - you start in urgent care and you’re either kept there or sent to the ED, where you are triaged again. Then there are lots of different bits like sub-acute or majors. Despite it being really busy, I didn’t get the impression anyone was there who shouldn’t have been.

I did notice different types of people depending on the time/day. And I was especially struck by how many young-ish men were there on a Monday morning with complaints that had been going on for weeks and had got much worse. Do men not go to the GP?!

Many patient are directed to a & e by their GP and 111. A headache could potentially be serious and the toes may have been broken.

Hope your mum is ok, OP.

This.
My partner has had chronic intermittent pain in his knee for weeks. He gave it the usual amount of time for it to correct itself, rang the GP recently to book an appointment for help and was told he had to wait nearly three weeks to see the GP. They didn’t deem it urgent enough to see him sooner! Frustrated he said if it gets worse I will just go to a&e. He hasn’t, but he could!

one of my relatives is always in a&e for one reason or another, they are a hypochondriac though, and in their case it’s genuinely a waste of time for all involved.

I genuinely can’t think of anything worse than being sat in a&e for a long period of time! I’ve personally only done it twice. Once sat for two hours in urgent care because I’d been unable to eat due to chronic throat pain for over a week! To be told, ITS VIRAL!
secondly, I sat in a&e for 6 hours because of a severe type of shingles. I had been sent by a locum GP and didn’t turn up by choice.

It's a widespread issue within society, as much as a underfunded and overstretched NHS. I have worked in frontline NHS services for decades, budgets are minuscule, the good staff are now all burnout (we have plenty of bad staff too), buildings are crumbling around us, there are gross inefficiencies at every turn making simple processes complicated and prone to system error. Patients are not able to access early help. There are no effective public health initiatives. Patients aren't safe.

There are also societal issues which are so pervasive we don't even see them. For many factions of society A&E is a day out, being ill is a badge of pride. It is quite common and well known. Good old British stoicism doesn't actually help when people don't want to bother their GP with headaches and high blood pressure and then have a massive stroke. People continue to take advantage of the system, it's their tax money etc. There are a thousand reasons why people choose the 'convenience' of A&E over GPs, I often see families so skint the parents can't take time off work to attend the GP and end up in A&E when they can't cope anymore. It's usually not sinister, but a great number of people are struggling for many many reasons.

The NHS needs reform. But in many ways its downfall is actually a result of it's own success.

I've been twice for me in the last few years. Broken finger and then broken ankle, I seem to be very accident prone as I get older!
I agree with you op some people take the piss and do not need to be there whats so ever. One lady came in with a cut on her knee, it wasn't deep or bad, just an ordinary cut, she asked for them to clean it, a nurse did tell her she could use antiseptic wipes herself. She left after waiting for 3 hours. What was the point of her going there, just no need.

I can't comment on the headache but it is unusual for more than one toe to be broken.
The treatment for a broken toe is usually "neighbour strapping", rest and painkillers