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

Well my husband had a headache it was a terminal brain tumour but so sorry we wasted their time. 🙄

Is it possible the poorly toe had blood under the toenail that was trapped?

My DD was in A&E with a poorly thumb this evening. Went to GP who said, straight to A&E! Your pain is caused by the blood pooling under your nail, so go and get it dealt with, and have an Xray too!

In fairness we were in and out within 3 hours and the nail had a hole put in it so blood is now draining out (the whole nail was blue from the blood!)

Fantastic idea. So the single mum who has £50 to live on for the next fortnight can just die then. Or the old guy on a state pension. Not everyone can access money upfront to claim back off their insurance. Or don’t poor people deserve health care?

What you’re describing is private health care. Not the NHS.

It’s the system that’s failing, stop blaming its users.

Strongly disagree with this. The NHS may be free but its, frankly, awful at this stage. Nothing to do with staff, but wait times are appalling and have literally killed people.

I live abroad where healthcare is not free, but is affordable, and extremely convenient and efficient. You can go in to see a doctor and that same day have scans, blood tests, whatever is required. It's amazing healthcare.

For this reason people use it to check up on even the most minor symptoms. I was shocked when I was recommended to go to hospital by my boss because I'd caught a cough! She said that your health is precious and a small thing can turn into a serious thing without our being able to realise or predict it. This is the general attitude among everyone I know who is local here. And they're absolutely right.

Having grown up in the UK, I too have always thought "it's not serious enough to waste a doctor's time." That seems crazy to me now. It's a really awful attitude and it's irresponsible to push this on people.

The UK needs a healthcare system that people can actually use whenever they need to. The NHS is not good enough.

No, I’m not in the UK at the moment.

And what worries me is the people who leave it far to late to go to a&E and then need more expensive care

My (now)! ex kept telling me I was being ridiculous for taking my son to A&E for an odd cough. He screamed at me the whole way there that I was wasting NHS resources. The hospital kept my son in and within hours he deteriorated and was rushed to ICU.

Ex's family "didn't want to trouble the doctors".when his 90 year old grandad had a fall onto ice. I came back from being out at the park with the children to find him sat in the hallway basically grey while they made him a cup of tea. Made them ring for an ambulance - he had broken both his hips.

its a big faff to get to our a&E. Parking is expensive. Buses are infrequent and expensive. most of the people living within walking distance work at the hospital. It's really not a thing you decide to do for convenience.

The only time I went to A&E for myself I seriously thought I was having a heart attack (chest pain, difficulty breathing etc). I was away from home and luckily there was a hospital with an A&E department not far from where we were staying... Turned out it was reflux (which I'd never had before) and after investigation (at another time) I have a hiatus hernia, which made the symptoms worse. I am most definitely, a leave it until I can't hang on any longer type of person, so I get the toe person frustration when your mum is clearly showing more signs of something requiring A&E. I was very lucky to have been triaged with an ECG very quickly in that A&E but the wait to see a Dr was about 5 hours... My aunt recently had to wait 5 hours for an ambulance with a broken hip, which is disgusting, but I guess the ambulances get sent to where they're told. She was inside, at home, less of an emergency than others, which I understand but it's sad.. I hope your mum is ok.

Yes, I had iih and so I was most grateful to be seen and admitted.

I'm sorry to hear about your loss. I hope you're doing OK.

I think the main issue is lack of service capacity within primary care and other services like secondary mental health care. It causes people to attend A&E, where they wouldn't need to if healthcare was otherwise accessible. You get advised to ring 111, and often, the advice ends up being to attend A&E.

However there are people who attended for stupid things which could have 100% waited until the morning when the GP opens, I agree.

Sorry to hear that.

But thank goodness the OP has stated twice that she was probably wrong to mention headaches.

So not actually wrong...

Yes we do!

https://app.nhs.wales/login

The problem is each area runs systems differently. How are patients expected to know when things have changed.

I've just taken my mum to the hospital, we thought it was her gallbladder flaring but something was different. Spoke to her GP surgery 1st and was told hospital was best place.

Not been near the hospital for unplanned care in 3 years so no idea what to do

It's utter chaos in the hospital as the assessment ward had been moved to the other end of the hospital so there's a lot of movement between either the assessment area and the xray/scan department.

Turns out my mum was actually having a heart attack. She's now been on the cardiac ward for 6 days

Apparently the hospital posted about the changes on Facebook, my mum is 81 so not somewhere she'd look for updates. I didn't realise they used Facebook in that way but looking at the amount of confused people wandering around the hospital thw word hasn't got out.

I'm not sure why anyone would actively want to sit for hours in a waiting room, the seats are like torture.

I remember years ago my dad being called into a&e in the middle of the night for an infusions. A blood test result meant he was in danger but you couldn't tell by looking at him.

30% of the people there are probably Mumsnetters responding to the command of "A&E. Now." to the most minor of concerns which can almost always be summed up as health anxiety + I shouldn't have googled.

That, and "log it with 111" drive me bonkers. That shit costs money, ffs.

I had to take my DD yesterday (Bank Hol) - she had an acute UTI and she was in agony and it is a recurring issue she has. I thought it would be rammed, but it was fairly empty. We were there for 4 hours, she was tested (urine) and given antibiotics, and off we went.

I honestly wouldn't say there was anyone there who shouldn't have been. There was a v worried mum with a newborn, two blokes with arms in makeshift slings, a bloke with a suspected stroke, a woman who was pale & grey who looked in so much pain, a woman with chest pains, and a girl who had had some sort of accident, with bad wounds all over her legs and head (come off her bike or something). Our A&E also has an urgent care centre, so none of these were inappropriate on a BH.

The thing is, it is almost impossible to get a GP appointment! I have to go online & there's about 25 screens to get through, then they always try to refer you somewhere else. For a UTI like my DD's, they refer you to the Pharmacy First scheme - fine - but Pharmacy now won't see her, because she's had it recur 3 times in 6 months. So then, I go back online to try & see a GP, giving her symptoms, it just refers you straight to A&E. So I wonder if this happens for other ailments too, hence people being at A&E for supposedly spurious reasons.

Our A&E now has the city out of hours GP clinic right next door, so you can ring 111 and be called back and given a slot at the OOH clinic, or you can be triaged in from A&E. They normally do triage at the door and it’s relatively quick for them to do it and send you over to the OOH clinic (where you then wait, but not for as long as at A&E); or if you stay in A&E you then book in and get assessed again. There’s a separate paeds A&E which can have on average a 4hr wait, or the main A&E is anything from 2 to 6 hours. Sometimes they have to open a separate assessment unit if there aren’t enough chairs. In the days of the 4-hour A&E target (good times!) you’d be seen on average after 2 to 3 hours, but now the wait is much longer.

A friend of mine recently fell and hurt herself badly in Brussels on holiday. She said there was zero wait in A&E, all was taken care of with her GHIC card, she was given great care right away and discharged within 90 minutes.

This is the same as I saw when attending a&e after 11pm twice in the last 8 months- also with chest pain.

I was also shocked to see how many had turned up with most of the close family/friends to sit with them while they waited! Obviously taking up the few chairs available. Strangely enough, the ones with the largest entourages, also seemed (to me) to be the least unwell/in need of ‘emergency’ treatment or assessment. They were all quite loud, seemed to be there as more of a social thing, and were often calling people loudly on their phones or nipping out for 100 fags. Yes I’m aware that I don’t know what is wrong with these people, what’s wrong could be non-visible and they could be seriously unwell, but all of them..? On both occasions?

Coincidentally, we have just been in France for a month. What we have seen there has truly opened our eyes! A&E visit at night, at a weekend, waiting room with 5 people in, took 20 minutes to be triaged, another 20 minutes to be seen and walked out with a prescription. 24 hour chemist sorted medication within 5 minutes. All of this was 30€ for the hospital visit and 10€ for the meds (antibiotics, steroids and ear drops). Also, this will all be reimbursed to me, thanks to the GHIC card. Although, tbh, even as poor as I am, I would happily pay this for the service and treatment I received.

Don’t read them then.

There is a chronic headache condition, can't remember what it's called. But it comes with a treatment plan, it's similar to migraines but far far worse and usually ends up with surgery eventually, but basically morphine/ dark room and lay down until it's gone. Pretty horrific. Used to admit the lady in near silence and stick earplugs in her ears as well as soon as she stepped through the doors.

I'm entitled to read them and give my opinion

You get advised to ring 111, and often, the advice ends up being to attend A&E.

In early 2020, I had a fall at home and broke my elbow. It wasn't very painful, but it ached and I couldn't straighten it. It was OOH, so I rang 111 and they made me an appointment at the urgent treatment centre, which is adjacent to A&E at our local hospital; in fact, it's a slightly more orderly way of accessing A&E, especially for those who need things like X-rays. If I'd waited till my GP surgery was open, I'd have been sent to A&E anyway as the surgery doesn't have an x-ray machine.

I was lucky; it was a quiet Sunday or Monday night and I was in and out in about an hour and in a taxi back home with my arm in a sling and advice to look after it till it healed. It wasn't an emergency, but it needed attention and getting it would have been no different whatever the time of day. I'd still have had to go to A&E.

My experience on MN is the very opposite? Posters are very much against advising A&E for no reason. But they also know when you really should go. And on every MN thread I’ve seen where a poster asks if they should go to A&E and is actually advised to (often by nurses and doctors on the thread), there has been a really good reason. One I saw recently was the lady with the painful boil, who ended up being admitted to have a serious abscess drained. Other posters have been at risk from cauda equina. And once I was on a live thread late at night on MN where a poster couldn’t wake her child, and several medic posters (and one with a DH who was a GP) told her to go to A&E immediately — the child turned out to have encephalitis from undiagnosed chickenpox, and undoubtedly those posters helped the mum get to the hospital in time. So in my experience MN is pretty judicious with the advice to go to A&E when it’s really needed.

I think it's very unfair to judge from small snippets of information.

When I took my son in last year, he wasn't triaged correctly because they made assumptions and went with a diagnosis that wasn't the correct one because he didn't look as unwell as you'd suspect with what was actually wrong with him. He was in fact incredibly poorly and the lack of care due to making snap judgements plus a delay from a surgeon who insisted it was the initial incorrect diagnosis almost cost him his life.

You are absolutely correct. We always knew that we were in for a quiet afternoon/evening when a cup match was on.

Our a and e has a security guard at the door and then a nurse check you in before you go and check in at the desk. I get the security guard but what have a nurse check you in. Is it to make sure have a genuine complaint when clearly they could be helping the back log.

One time I took my husband and he was sent straight to out of hours doctor who sent him to a surgical ward. They seemed very worried as he just lay on the floor. He had acute pancreatitis. About 3am they told me to leave him and he would be ok. Was in for a week

Last time I went we called 111 and they said well if he is having chest pain go to a and e. He got there and said he felt like an idiot. 5 hours later he was discharged as nothing found on blood work. Referred him for a cardiac physical and to rest

This is often down to inefficient technology used across the NHS. I work in the tech sector and know that the NHS wastes many many millions buying lots of different types of technology systems to centralise info and then not implementing it properly. Systems are varied, hard to use and not easily accessible - particularly challenging for the many locum doctors.

I have lots of friends who are doctors in hospitals and complain that in many hospitals there isn't an easy to access central database of information, so they lack visibility into patient issues. Frustrating when you're being asked as the patient, but critical and worrying when you're treating someone unconscious...