How long in a chair in a&e?

[ThisMustBeMyDream]

My DH has been diagnosed with a perforated bowel. We've been in urgent care/a&e since 1pm. He doesn't care if they nurse him on a corridor, but he just wants to lie down. He's in a chair and exhausted and in pain. Lying down relieves the symptoms (he discovered when he had an ecg).
There's no sign of a bed for him. I asked about a trolley - no, none of them.
How long is it acceptable to leave someone in a chair? My head's a shed, can't think straight. I've had a hell of a week with my DF after collapsing and having CPR. He's been diagnosed with encephalitis and it's life changing. So having spent Monday night doing a 3 hour dash to my dad, then 3 days down with him. Coming back home and my DH becoming unwell today... I'm an emotional wreck. I just need a sense check on what's normal.

wtf is this i’m reading. what people on this thread are describing sounds like something from a developing country in the ‘90s. how has this become normalised?

The waiting for medication I have come across before. If you aren’t discharged on Friday afternoon you will almost definitely need to wait until Monday.

Just why?

The cost of changing a light bulbs and painting a room is thanks private finance initiative programme to build new hospital and hand the running of the building over a private entity for a few decades
They can jack up the price the charge and cut the quality and the contracts are legally really hard to break or demand decent service under them.

2011:
FactCheck: Does PFI offer the taxpayer value for money? – https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-does-pfi-offer-the-taxpayer-value-for-money

Its been that way for decades

I left the NHS in 1999

When I started in '84, you wanted a light bulb, your rang estates, and someone popped along and changed the light bulb

Somewhere along the line, it stopped being a question of whoever noticed reported directly. So I noticed, I had to go to line manager, line manager had to fill in a request which went to estates, someone came over and did a risk assessment , and suddenly someone jumping up on a desk became 2 people, a ladder, cordoning off tape - the works

We used to be able to ring porters to help shift furniture - now a full on risk assessment was done

Worse waste of money I personally saw, was moving a medical records department. 3 quotes , 2 from specialised companies, and it was the third company - a removal company ( big multinational ) who got it - because they were on the approved list - only then, over time was paid for months afterwards at weekends to sort the complete balls up they made, endless patients were cancelled because their records were misfiled

How many men did it take to change a light bulb in the NHS - around 5 as a rule

What a shit show!! I’m glad your hubby has a bed. Get home and get some sleep. X

These stories are horrific. I've been admitted 3 times in the last 18 months via the GP to SDEC at a busy hospital in a major city. Twice for suspected blood clots and once for pneumonia, the longest I was ever in was 6 hours and I wasn't just sat waiting for more than an hour or so without being tested or updated by the staff. I was actually staggered by the efficiency. I think it does make a difference if your GP refers you in, though that relies on you being able to see a GP in the first place

This is horrific.

The comments about turning into a third world country are frankly an insult to poorer countries. Our healthcare system is totally broken.

Last month, I broke my leg while on holiday in Uzbekistan. Some bystanders called an ambulance, which came promptly. I was then seen at the emergency room within half an hour of arriving — given painkillers in the ambulance, some more at the ER, x ray, ankle realigned, more x rays, temporary cast put on. All done in two hours from when I fell.
However, because this was a small town hospital in Uzbekistan, they did not want to take the risk of operating on a British citizen so I still needed to deal with that once I got home.

I have private insurance and made an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon. The morning of the appointment he calls me to say he can’t see me because he can’t operate within the following two weeks.

I called my NHS GP — she said go to A&E. I called private GP — she said go to A&E. I knew exactly what I needed but the computer just says go to A&E.

So off to A&E we go, where they first route us to urgent care to make sure it’s not just a sprain (although we had the x rays clearly indicating it was not), then to x rays, then to an orthopedic team who realigned the ankle again and said they were not sure if they could get me in for surgery that day or not. So back to X rays after realignment and then back to A&E waiting room. We got there before noon and by this point it is 7 pm and I am nil by mouth because I still don’t know if they are operating. My husband asks what is going on and they say they are trying to get me a bed. What for? Is the surgery scheduled? Who can say.

Finally, in a corridor bed by 11 pm, still on indication of when they are operating (because I was thinking if it is not immediately then why don’t I just go sleep at home?!).

The next morning I think I managed to advocate well enough for myself to be wheeled into surgery first thing.

Discharge was a mess too. I was ready to be discharged the day after surgery but they needed to deliver certain mobility aids to our house which they didn’t manage to do for another day, so that was an extra night I took up a bed unnecessarily.

All that to say: a lot of bureaucratic processes, private insurance doesn’t help for things you can’t plan / book in advance, it’s all just broken.

Having studied how things are run from close personal contact hospital is a frustrating place to be. The nursing, cleaning and catering staff are, on the whole , lovely and very good at their jobs.
Its the weekday and office hours only restriction that adds to the backlog. Even if you are lucky enough to get admitted quickly on a Friday for example nothing much will be done until the following Monday as most of the consultants aren't working. The doctors who are there are mainly too junior to make any decisions themselves.
So days are wasted in just occupying a bed and waiting for the big man to order whatever tests /procedures are necessary. Its just accepted by everyone thats how it is. Things should change .

I worked in AE in the 90s and check in to hospital bed was 4 hours. It was considered the most acceptable time line! WTAF has changed!!?

My son was admitted straight to a ward via a paramedic assessment in an ambulance. Except no bed. He slept on the floor while we waited for a bed. Five elderly gentleman were waiting on chairs for beds. Too frail to be home but too well for hospital. Drs send them to hospital as no where else for them to go. Don’t get ill on a Friday afternoon.

I'm so glad hes now in a bed.

This thread has been a shocking and eye opening read. Im so sorry to everyone who has suffered the consequences of this service not being fit for purpose.

It's utterly awful OP, and the others here who've had such a bad experience.
My recent wait was 8hours, GP sent me. Everything fine, waste of time, GP just wanted me gone I think. Neighbour with heart failure was in there 15 hours before given a bed, then sent home after seeing a consultant. Gave her son a lift up there via tesco sandwich shopping as she'd not eaten or drunk while waiting for the bed..

I must say tho, there's so many time wasters in A&E, that it's like people have forgotten totally what A&E stands for. We need firmer triage systems in place and people either sent home to talk to their GP or off to the pharmacy. We've seen people in there with a cough they've had for 24hrs and people who's back has been hurting for a few days. I understand GP apts are hard to get but did we completely forget how to look after ourselves too? Utter madness.

I'm an electrician, this is actually how they roll.

Get a call to go and look at a broken lightswitch, go to hospital with correct switch in tool box, all £1.75 worth. Look, easy job, tell estates manager will take 1/2 hour cost £50. No dice, need to put in a quote to central purchasing - back to office, contact central purchasing, need to do a method statement, risk assessment - bloody hell, half a day in the office - £250 now with all the faff, get the order, go back, fit switch.

Local state school, another government function, same type of job, go in, bits on the van, quick chat, do job, go home invoice £50.

But the NHS don't use us yokel locals much now anyway, they use these big property maintenance firms - recently I met two chaps who had come down from Oldham to Southampton to change a light fitting.

He was actually sent in by a GP, as he got an out of hours appt. They sent him straight up with a letter. But we still ended up in this situation.
We are in a largish town in North West England.

Not Bolton? This is my local and it is an absolutely horrendous hospital.

One a&e trip I was washing my hands having just used the only cubicle that locked. A maintenance guy walks in with a huge toolbox and starts fixing the sink next to me. I tell him there is only one cubicle that locks, could he screw the other two cubicle locks back on (they were there on the sink waiting to be put back on) ...

" You need to report that to reception" " they will tell my boss it needs doing" "I can only fix what's on my list today" ... I mean how ridiculous can the NHS get, he was there, it would take a few seconds on each one. I wanted to take a screwdriver from him and do it myself. But no, let's leave the women with one cubicle for the whole of A&E.

I've had a few hospital visits lately:

• DH had pneumonia and they put him in chairs until they realised his CRP was >600 and decided that might be why his fingers were cold and yellow.

• GP sent DD1 to A&E at 6pm. A senior registrar stood up at about midnight and said that if anyone felt well enough to leave and return in the morning, he suggested they did so, and that the minors patients had already been told they wouldn't be seen. When I decided to follow his advice, the junior doctor said DD1 needed to sign an 'Against Medical Advice' form. DD1 doesn't have capacity to do that. I said that I was following advice, and the senior reg used a word salad to assert that although he had used the words 'I suggest you go home if you can do so', that it wasn't 'medical advice' and that he couldn't advise because he hadn't examined DD1. I pointed out that I couldn't possibly know if it was ok to take her home, either, because I didn't know. DD1 was finally admitted at 6 am.

• I was called at 1.30 am to say that DD2's blood tests were bad and I needed to take her to A&E. She was admitted at 05.30. I don't recognise the 'nursing' she experienced on the first ward. No nursing admission questions, and the nurse associate spent the whole shift typing on a computer. Curtains had to be fully open. DD2 has ASD and the NA tried to send me home. She kept telling me that the ASD wasn't documented. I told her that she needed to take that up with the admitting doctors, who I told. Once they accepted that she had ASD and I needed to stay, I slept on the floor for 6 nights across 3 different wards.

• DD1 is complicated. She had pain but no tests were identifying the cause. A surgeon told me to take her to Costa coffee and to smell flowers and she'd be distracted so the pain would go away. Then discharged her with bottles of paracetamol, and a bottle of morphine.

• In A&E there weren't enough drip stands so nurses were attaching rubber tourniquets to the curtain rails so they could hang IV fluids from them.

I was a nurse at that hospital until 5 years ago and it's unrecognisable. It's a good hospital. So how the bad ones are struggling, I can only imagine.

No they won't. I spent 13 hours in a chair last week, several people bedded down on the floor, including two prisoners being guarded by 4 X police officers. They were all left on the floor.

Because for at least three decades the public has worshipped at the altar of gratitude in the belief the NHS is free and therefore beyond criticism. It is not free and it is not beyond criticism.

Until recently if anyone dared criticise the NHS on MNet there was an almighty pile on.

The public shut down for the NHS in the pandemic. Sadly the NHS has not opened up for us since. The contract is now broken and the people who work in the NHS broke it.

Vive la revolution.

I'm glad he has a place to lie down now and hope you can get some rest too.

I genuinely believed that seriously ill people are still seen quickly in A&E until I became seriously ill myself. I am genuinely traumatised by my experience three years on. The most humiliating and degrading experience ever. I ended up on the floor barely conscious as the sepsis took hold, vomiting, covered in my own piss and deteriorating fast. Luckily my OH is not one for messing and god knows how but appropriated a trolley and got me on it to get me off the floor and spoke to every single person in a uniform he could find until one listened, came and looked at me and then all hell broke loose and I was very quickly taken to majors 11 hours after I arrived and eventually surgery. I was lucky not to lose my leg or worse. I don't know what would have happened had that one person in a nurses uniform (who it turned out didn't even work in A&E!) not listened to OH and came to look.

Wow, the people who work in the NHS did not fucking break it. The politicians broke it.

Can confirm no private A&Es exist in this country.

I have phenomenal, and I mean phenomenal healthcare insurance through work, and it doesn’t matter a jot. The closest I could get was a 10pm closing time walk in at a private London hospital but only for, essentially, minor injuries.

I was ok and when I next saw my private consultant, he confirmed no such thing as private A&E (partly because you couldn’t staff for any and all A&Es. You’d need a full service hospital for equipment etc too).

I’m afraid there are a LOT of people who work on the NHS who do not earn their salaries and a LOT of people who speak to you like shit/behave exactly how they want as they know they can get away with it.

The similarities with housing associations are stark

But there didn't used to be a LOT, so what's changed?