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

Our health service is not fit for purpose at the minute and that is the big problem. Yes, there are people who rush to a and e over anything at all but I don't think that they are the people we should be pointing fingers at. We don't have an a and e in our town and the minor injuries and our of hours doctors are often closed, they say this is due to lack of adequate staffing. I care for my elderly dad who has had 2 hospital admissions this year, each time I called an ambulance as I found him on the floor and couldn't lift him off the floor by myself.

The first time he was 48 hours in the overcrowded corridor of a and e waiting for a bed. They finally made a make shift bed on the corridor of the ward for him. They proposed a plan for increasing his home care and then once he was medically well enough we took him home. The nurses were surprised we agreed to take him home as most don't until care is sorted. That was February, he still hasn't received the care, if he had stayed in hospital it would have been sorted by now. I can see why people are keeping their elderly in the hospital, bed blocking.

In May he was in again. I spoke to the doctor about his condition and was told that frequent hospital admissions are likely, I asked for input from a specialist nurse on a regular basis in order to see the signs of an acute issue to avoid that and they said they'd sort it. That was may and still we've had no visit from the nurse.

Last week it took me 236 tries before I got through to his GPs office.

I myself have a chronic illness and was due to see my specialist last in late 2023 and that appointment never transpired. It is a regular appointment but due to understaffing I have been left hanging.

In 2020, I got COVID and lay in bed for 10 days afraid to annoy the doctors as we were told to. My husband ended up demanding I phoned the doctor who put me on a 3 day course of antibiotics and told me it was a bad illness and I'd have to deal with it. A week later I was in A and E on the cusp of sepsis and had to be admitted.

My friend is a surgeon who has just left the UK as she said the NHS has become dangerous to the people and it was terrible to see.

I got sent to A&E for a thunderclap headache by my GP - had to have a CT scan to make sure I hadn’t had a bleed on the brain given family history.

A couple of years ago I waited in A and E for 7 hours.
I saw about 1 police restraint per hour.

When I walked in, a patient was being restrained on the floor. Another woman was wandering around, shouting at anyone who would listen about how she was going to 'fuck her up because she's a cunt' etc

One man brought in shouting swearing and spitting by 7 police men. A waiting man shouted shut up at him which just made him worse.

At one point a woman in her 70's was left outside in the very low temperatures for a while as the police said it wasn't safe to go back in the waiting room g room!

At o e point, what looked like a homeless man came in. He said 'alright Julie?' to the receptionist and she said 'alright Ron' and he went and lay down on some seats.

A woman sat close to me was dozing off with a head wound bleeding through bandages on to her face. We told the nurse. Then the woman said that she felt sick, so we got her a sick bowl and told the nurse. She dozed and then lost consciousness and fell to the ground - finally she was taken through from the waiting room.

I have never seen anything like it!!

It’s also not helped by UK citizens being shit at looking after their own health. We refuse to eat well and exercise enough, so of course we place more burden on a health system.

You're probably right in that a lot of cases don't fall into the "Emergency" category, but chest pain always does and so I would expect your mum to be seen pretty quickly. Hope this turns out to be the case and that all is well.

All our GP routine appointments are taken between 8 and 8.05. if you normally drive to work at that time you can't get a routine one.

So yes , I and many others end up leaving it far longer than we should to get checked

For the retired people though they have a nice morning chat while they all wait at the doctor's for the doors to open

But that would have been a private hospital, it's not at all comparable.

Agree. I know people who go to A&E at the drop of the hat. They seem to enjoy it.

I also think it’s often a loneliness issue, especially with older people.

You’re very brave OP. I started a thread on exactly this issue after receiving treatment in a corridor, right outside triage and was horrified at the amount of time wasters. Somebody turning up for water in their ear at 2am!

This is when the NHS says you should attend A&E:

A&E (accident and emergency) is for serious injuries and life-threatening emergencies.

There is a minor injuries and ailments at my local hospital but you only seem to be able to access it through 111 and with them being so cautionary often times you are advised to go to A&E. It works well for getting antibiotics for a nasty case of tonsillitis/ ear infection type stuff.

The only time I’ve gotten an appointment there for myself was after I’d been to GP as was feeling dreadful and having stomach pains, she referred onto gastro as emergency case. Just kept on feeling worse though so by the time weekend rolled around I genuinely thought I was dying. They did admit me as I needed a blood transfusion.

Certainly where we are any suspected breaks we go through A&E. There are different streams though depending on who you need to see. A straightforward fracture gets you an x ray, assessed by nurse practitioner and an appointment with the virtual fracture clinic. This can be done pretty speedily. I’ve been in and out in under 2 hours with a child who had a “green stick” fracture, triage, pain relief, x ray, splint and out you go.

At our hospital after triage , you are either sent to medoc which is a gp and waiting starts again , minors which is where you need to be seen for further investigation or treatment , or if needed majors which is for more serious stuff . But access to healthcare is patchy and often you can be sent to the wrong service ie to pharmacy or minors when it is outside their brief which is wasting time and is frustrating .

I waited 7 hours in a&e I was really struggling to breathe, couldn't walk more than a couple of steps without gasping for breath. Apparently that wasn't urgent enough at triage.
Once I was finally seen by a dr I was whisked off to resus, then spent 2 weeks in ICU. Turned out I had a 19cm tumour in my chest.

A toe even if broken isn’t an emergency. When did you last see a toe in a plaster cast? You strap it to the other toe and see a GP or the NP.

See the other threads, where the chief complaints are that nobody double checked, or everyone just went with what the previous nurse / doctor diagnosed and 3 months later we found out it was cancer....

Double and triple checking is essential, anything else is lazy medicine in my opinion.

A dislocated toe, or an intra articular fracture, particularly of the big toe could be an emergency in terms of warranting an ED/UTC visit in order to have it properly assessed and treated.

You are judgy! I broke my little toe and went to A&E, it was bloody painful and swollen. After I saw whoever I went back to work but I was in great pain for many weeks. Read a book or chat to your mother and mind your own business.

Ever wondered why A&E is deserted during the World Cup?

A&E visits increase during the World Cup, due to alcohol!

The headache I understand. A very severe headache can be pain like nothing else and very scary. I know someone whose child suffered very severe headaches for months and the GP just kept dismissing it as the onset of puberty, sending her away with painkillers. They ended up in A&E more than once and were sent home.

Turns out she had a huge, cancerous brain tumour and she collapsed, fitted and went unconscious in the GPs waiting room one day, after her parents took her there for yet another emergency appointment and to beg for a referral or a brain scan.

Well that was one way to get a brain scan and a consultant to finally look at you, but not a way that anyone would choose. It took her about two years to recover to 'full' health after emergency brain surgery followed by more surgery and several months in hospital. She's alive, reasonably well and living a relatively normal life thank god, but she's been left with mild brain damage and some sight damage.

I do think far too many people use A&E like a walk-in out of hours GP service, but frankly these days I can no longer blame them. If they can't get to see a GP via the normal route and in a reasonable time frame as they should be entitled to do, then what else does the NHS expect? No-one chooses to sit in A&E for hours unless they are frightened or at the end of their tether with pain and no answers.

My next door neighbour had an infection in his toe from an in growing toenail. Turned to sepsis. Leg amputated.

headaches can be very serious.

why so judgey op?

If 111 send you to minor injuries / gp at the local hospital it's the same waiting room as A&E for us.

Same applies for Christmas Day! I had to be taken to a and e Christmas Day after an accident (I’m no longer allowed to carve the turkey lol) and it was earily quiet

Pain in a toe can be extremely severe, depending on the cause. It could be an injury or an infection.

It's not a cheek to ask if NHS staff can be speeded up, they get few perks. She asked and was told no, asking hurt nobody.

Headaches can indicate a serious problem including a burst aneurysm or a stroke. I doubt it was a tension headache, nobody would go to A&E with that, they'd take an over the counter analgesic and have a lie down. Someone I know went to A&E with a severe headache and she had a brain bleed, quite a young person too. She died the next day.

You should not be looking and listening in, never mind making judgements.

I took my dd to A&E with symptoms of a cold that I didn't feel good about.

Gp brushed me off twice.

Thank god I did because dd didn't have a cold, she had strep A in her lung which had caused her lungs to harden and that caused sepsis which had, in turn, made her liver and kidneys start to fail.

She was in hospital for 2 months and if I had left it another 8 hours she wouldn't be here.

I wouldn't judge, you have no idea of the backstory.

Getting an ambulance just gets you to hospital quicker. It doesn't get you seen faster, you still have to be triaged

Its a such a complex situation. There is a definite lack of responsibility of own health, education and a lack basic understanding of health and illness amongst our population. I've been in AE before and asked to triage a patient with toe pain verruca at 4am!