a&e bad experience

[cucumberpeach]

Just having a little moan as feeling a bit sorry for myself. I know people go through worse things.

I woke up with agonising abdominal pain which worsened all day, vomiting and everything and not keeping anything down. DM called the GP for me and they sent for an ambulance which took several hours to come (not complaining, it's not their fault, obvs there will have been more serious cases to attend to).

Eventually they came and I've now been in the hospital for hours in agony. They didn't give me pain relief, had to beg for it several times. It helped but then wore off and they ignored my polite requests for more. They actually shouted at me when I tried to lie on the floor as it brought relief. They told off a kind lady who went to ask if I could be seen as I was in a lot of pain for misleading them as they thought she was asking for her own mother and asking on behalf of someone else is apparently 'against the rules'.

After asking at the desk four times over the course of an hour they gave me a codeine pill but I'm dreading it wearing off.

Just a bad experience and still haven't seen the dr. Upside is seeing how kind the patients are to eachother, we're all sticking up for eachother! One women was stroking my hair as I lay on the floor in pain.

I realise nurses and medics have a really hard job btw. Just quite miserable at this point.

It's like they can't read 🤷🏻‍♀️

Op, the amb took hours to arrive fo it wasn't as if it was deemed urgent it was being used as transport whilst someone else waited. Your mum should've taken you.

You said you waited hours in A&E suggesting the wait was an issue whilst in a previous post you've now said you didn't complain about that.

I'm sorry you had an upset stomach but GPs and dispatch staff can only go on what they are told over the phone regarding if a&e is needed.

To be seen, given oral painkillers and sent home clearly suggests it was nothing worrying. I think you said you went to A&E previously after a faint? What I would do if I were you is maybe read up about health anxiety and in the mean time have paracetamol and otc codeine (low doses are available) for any future ailments. I mean this kindly. Worrying about illnesses is awful but i think youre focusing on the wrong things, of course you'll be told to get off the floor, it's a busy department people could trip and fall. Good luck .

You are way off. I do not have 'health anxiety'. I had major surgery last year and the nurses and pre op anaesthetist all commented on how relaxed I seemed to the point that they asked if I was in denial! You are neither a medic nor a psychologist so I think just stick to the day job which I hope to god does not involve caring for other peope.

@DameM Could you be any more condescending? OP explained that she was lying on the floor unable to move. How the hell is an elderly woman going to carry her downstairs? Why do people come out with such rubbish?

OP, I’m glad you’re back home now, and the pain is easing. My dd had the same experience recently at the Royal. It was a ruptured ovarian cyst that had become infected. She was in agony, and was ignored for hours. I ended up getting a bit shitty with them and at that point they did finally sort some pain relief for her. I’m usually always polite but they just ignore you. It’s utter carnage in there, we’ll go to Whiston in future.

And for those people blaming immigrants, the A&E in question is usually full of white British alcoholics and drug addicts, not foreign ones.

Ok, but why were you so angry about being told to get off the floor can you not see it was a health and safety risk? They should've been polite I agree but they are run ragged, under massive pressure looking after seriously ill people as well as GP walk ins so cut them some slack.

Tbh sometimes after surgery people can go on to worry about every twinge, it is an absolutely normal reaction so I wouldn't write off health anxiety, maybe talk to your gp about it

I wasn't angry about being told to get off the floor. I'm afraid you just don't understand things very well.

Odd comment. I’d be angry if I was told to stop lying down if I was so ill I wasn’t able to sit.

If anyone’s at a point where they feel they have no choice but to lie down on a filthy floor in an NHS hospital waiting room, with hordes of people around, then they are quite obviously in need of doing so. In which case, they should be on a bed or trolley. If I were in that state I’d be laying down as well, and if the health and safety aspect is really so momentous,then a trolley or bed would need to be found, because I’d no way be getting up if I didn’t feel able to.

As for health and safety? What about the health and safety of the patients who aren’t being treated in a timely and proper manner? That is also an issue and shouldn’t be ignored.

You’ve never been in agony have you? So when people tell you they are in agony you’ll equate that to a time you’ve had mild/moderate pain.

OP was angry about being told to get off the floor because obviously that was the only position that she could bear, and wasn’t offered an alternative place to lie down.

Imagine if the told a birthing woman that she couldn’t adopt a position that was most comfortable but told her that her only option was to sit on a hard plastic chair and not move. I’ve had situations that have been far more painful than being in labour.

Add to all this the fact DM is physically quite old and tired for her age after a lifetime of diabetes - there is no way she could lift me on a good day, let alone having just done a long drive across the country to get to me.

Dimwits on this thread will not be getting any more attention from me.

Thank you to all the wonderful people here who actually seem to understand the situation ❤

And for the record I wasn't angry - just a bit upset at the manner in which it was done which was totally unacceptable, not the fact that it was done, which I assume is hospital policy and not the fault of the nurses. DM said it would be a disciplinary matter where she worked.

I am so so sorry, it's terrible your daughter had to go through that. I hope she is doing well ❤

I am so sorry, I hope you are ok now. Those tiny things make such a huge difference don't they - the person who smiled and didn't make you feel like a nuisance.

And for the record I don't worry about illness at all. That other time I collapsed in a cafe and hit my head after what turned out to be a bad reaction to some new medication - other people insisted I had to go to hospital and get checked out even though I thought I was fine. My friend drove me to a&e where they kindly gave me a blanket to lie on as I was too dizzy and sick to sit up. After about 11 hours I saw the dr and said I hoped I wasn't wasting his time as I thought I was fine and it was just a funny turn. He said I wasn't wasting his time at all and it was the right thing to do to come in.

I've never actually called an ambulance for myself - other people always did it after taking advice from TRAINED MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS on the phone.

Thank you ❤

I'm not sure where you live if you're so sure that an ambulance will reliably arrive quickly if you're in dire straits, but in many area this is not guaranteed at all.

There are only so many ambulances. The amount provided is clearly inadequate for the need where I am, as it is quite common to ring up with a life-threatening emergency (eg somebody with a serious respiratory condition with serious breathing difficulties), only to be told they hope to get an ambulance soon, but are currently responding to several cardiac arrests - more than they have ambulances to cover. So you wait for a very long time, even though your life hangs in the balance. If you had a stroke, at certain times of year it''d be a near miracle if they managed to pick you up in time to get to hospital for treatment within the golden time period to avoid lasting damage.

They can't pluck an ambulance out of the air if there simply isn't one, even if someone will die as a result of the lack of it. This does happen. People are also often left with life-long disability and illness that could have been avoided if only they'd had prompt medical attention.

The issue is there isn't enough ambulance provision in many areas of the country. So it's a nonsense to blithely state that a lack of prompt ambulance arrival proves somebody's condition wasn't serious.

I'm so sorry your daughter and you went through this.

One thing that stood out from your post was the lack of concern or hurry from staff - the strolling, when people are in desperate need of prompt attention.

This sums up my experience of regularly needing to attend A&E and also what I've seen on the wards, with a close family member with a life-threatening respiratory condition. Waiting room like a war zone, with vast amounts of patients in distress, pain, in danger, and staff move at a pace reminiscent of people on a Zen yoga retreat. Similar on the wards - with perhaps the exception of the doctors doing their ward rounds, when they do seem to move themselves - everyone else goes at a snail's, pace no matter how much they need to do, or how many people are waiting.

I don't get it. That pace of working wouldn't be tolerated in most other work places, in situations where what's being done is so much less important. I feel like I want to take them to a trading floor in the City and say 'look at that, that's the pace people move at when they have a sense of urgency'. Even a look at the staff in McDonald's would give more of a clue.

honestly some clearly haven’t bothered to read your initial post properly let alone all your updates. Or they have read it and are deliberately disregarding your point just to be goady. Who knows but yeah don’t give them any more attention.

I’m sure someone would have have ridiculed me for going to a&e in an Ambulance due to a sharp pain in the leg and feeling dizzy if it had not turned out to be serious.

You did the right thing by going to A&E because the thing is you don’t know it’s “nothing” or “not serious” until you do know.

Really glad you are ok. Awful that it should rely on the luck of being in another country when it happened.

Thank you ❤️

I know right it’s a terrible state of affairs.

I’m glad you’re okay too!

'OP explained that she was lying on the floor unable to move. How the hell is an elderly woman going to carry her downstairs?'

She was home hours later on oral painkillers. So that is a swift <but obviously good> turnaround.

Look, I'm not suggesting people shouldn't seek appropriate health care but the reason a&e is backed up and under pressure is because of the masses of those with minor illnesses who use the service as a walk in service. Yes I get the hopeless gp told her to go, I'd be directing any complaints to them they should obviously have seen and examined the patient rather than going on what info her dm was telling them over the phone.

You seem very confused.

The last time I was in A&E it was with a friend of mine who’d accidentally overdosed on pain killers taken for an abscess in her tooth. It wasn’t a substantial overdose and too late for charcoal so I thought we’d be advised for watchful waiting at home and was prepared to stay at my friend’s house, but no, 111 insisted we go to A&E.

It was certainly an experience. We were there 6 hours. In that time I heard a lot of conversations and would say that at least 1/3rd of people there didn’t need to be. Some couldn’t get a GP appointment so decided to take shortcut, others (like us) had been told to go by 111, some just hadn’t really considered that their issue wasn’t an emergency at all! There was one entire family there that was treating the whole thing as a family day out as if it was the most fun they’d had in years!

One man was downright aggressive with lne of the nurses and several patients were just plain rude.

However, standards were also scary. The nurse we saw could not calculate the amount of drugs my friend had taken. I told I’m how many tablets over how many hours and three times he used the same information to come up with three completely different answers, all of which were wrong. In the end, I did it for him. Then we were told to go home and watchfully wait. Could have avoided the entire episode and saved an A&E nurse’s time.

I feel sorry for the staff and patients alike. The system is broken. A&E are picking up the pieces for years of underinvestment in our GP infrastructure and 111 personnel being mostly non-medically qualified.

How did you get downstairs and into the ambulance, OP? Stretcher, chair or walk?

You are totally right. There was no sense of hurrying at all. I would completely understand the staff having quick chats and a bit of humour and laughter as they work - I think that's necessary actually. My experience wasn't that. You would think they were sitting behind a shop counter or something.

GPs don’t have X-Ray vision. They can’t tell what needs a scan, or further tests that they cannot provide. The GP advice to go to A&E was absolutely correct.

I have had abdominal pain that have led to A&E visits. These included kidney stones, phylophrenitis which can lead to sepsis and needs urgent IV antibiotics, and on one occasion post-surgical internal bleeding which resulted in a severely infected football-sized blood clot in my pelvis which came close to killing me.

I’ve also attended for excruciating period pain (endometriosis and adenomyosis), for which I was given pain relief and sent home.

The point is, they all had broadly the same symptoms. Until you attend A&E you don’t know the cause. If I’d have written off my symptoms as just period pain when my kidneys were infected or I had internal bleeding, I’d be dead.

Who knows if their symptoms are indigestion or a heart attack? A migraine or a brain haemorrhage? Should women stop visiting their GP to check breast lumps just because 90% of them turn out to be nothing?

It is always best to check.