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.

I work as a nurse in my hospital and was sent down to a&e on a shift due to abdo pain, was vomiting and was coming in waves like labour pain so bearing in my mind I was in uniform 🙈 first nurse was fab, when the pain hit I couldn’t sit down so was pacing around or lent against a wall, she sorted out oramorph and I’d then be able to sit for a few hours with mild pain.

Then shift change in the morning the pain started again whilst I was waiting for surgical review, I was at the point of crying, groaning, leant against a wall pacing again and the nurse saw me but didn’t seem bothered. It was only when a registrar came in, he demanded the nurse sort me out some more morphine 😬 I was in too much pain to advocate for myself and that’s someone who works there so it really opened my eyes to what the general public face in a&e

These experiences have reminded me of when my now 94yr old neighbour fell in her daughter's garden a couple of years ago. They called for an ambulance, were told to make their own way to the hospital. They managed to get a lift but got stuck in an RTA for almost 2hrs.

My neighbour had a shattered hip and broken arm. Traction, a lengthy stay in hospital.

Just shocking.

My DH was a police officer for 20yrs (just retired). They are often the second ambulance service.
When people complain about police not caring and not turning up it’s often because they are ferrying people to the hospital as there are no ambulances, trying to talk someone down from a car park, looking for a missing person with mental health issues, sitting with a criminal in A&E or taking home drunk females!
He went to 8 suicides in 4 weeks just before he retired. He’s had to man handle elderly people with broke hips, legs, arms, collarbones several times from the roadside after collapse despite not knowing how to lift someone medically correctly. They don’t teach the police that.
NHS staff are a lazy bunch. I have experienced it over and over again.
The good ones are treated badly and do all the work. It must be soul destroying for them.

I worked for NHS for 34 years, yes there are some doctors and nurses who work hard BUT there are also some very useless ones who are very un caring and unprofessional, standup for your self if you feel uncomfortable being someone with you or ask for second opinion

I read threads like this and it makes me absolutely dread becoming suddenly unwell or having an accident. I live alone so would have nobody to support me or to be my advocate and the latter seems to be essential. I last had to go to A and E about 20 years ago and it was fine, it now sounds like hell on earth. I have also recently had some health issues after 7 years of not needing to see my GP and it was shocking how much things have deteriorated. Negotiating the system has become more complex, my surgery no longer does blood tests, you have to book an appointment at a central location in the city rather than walking to the local health centre. Took half an hour on the phone and a week's wait for an appt. This is just a tiny example and in the greater scheme of things not too bad but so different from how things were.

Admitted on their own, no one to keep an eye on them

You raise a good point here, I feel when you’re admitted on your own you may be more vulnerable. I saw others get partners, adult children etc to go and speak for them. And I think staff are forced to take you more seriously and probably less likely to be rude when you’re not alone. although tbf I was alone and the staff were all quite nice to me.

Most staff I spoke to in a&e were a lot more compassionate than my GPs despite the crazy waiting times- but I totally believe that others had a completely different and unpleasant experience which must be so awful 😣 . I mean its bad enough being unwell never mind dealing with that kind of attitude.

I was placed in a smaller waiting room with people who had had some treatment but were waiting for more and there was a nurse supervising that room overnight.

I apologised to her for being anxious and asking when the doctor was coming. Her reply was that I wasn’t to apologise and she would be the same. She even said she would be scared too given my situation and the expected wait time - not that comforting, but I guess she was being honest 😂

She also said she didn’t see such huge waiting times in that hospital (medium sized town) until post pandemic. I wonder if that’s the same across the board?

Until then I hadn’t been to a UK A&E in about 15 years so I don’t know what waiting times were normally like everywhere else. But she said it’s been horrendous in the past few years.

I live alone so would have nobody to support me or to be my advocate and the latter seems to be essential.

Yep so true. I just read this after my previous post and I completely agree with this too.
I was mindful that I had no one to advocate for me and I had to be very vocal, while still remaining polite of course - no shouting or swearing. One of the doctors in particular was very dismissive and essentially was saying it was anxiety 🤡 he wasn’t rude as such but he was saying various daft stuff clearly to try and get rid of me, which even his senior apologised for later.

I live alone and generally speaking really don’t like asking for help unless it’s absolute necessary.

But I am now thinking of giving my neighbour i am friends with spare keys in case I need her to bring me anything if I’m hospitalised in future. At least just seeing people check in on you will let them know others are keeping an eye out.

In my last job, they hired a new manager who had formerly been quite high up in the NHS. It was an eye-opener as, although he was lovely, he didn’t seem to be able to do anything other than write long rambling emails. A dead weight in a lot of ways.

He never knew it but several people left because despite hiring them, he wasn’t capable of telling them what to do.

Given that almost every single woman will be on her own at the end, we really should be working together to build some sort of collaborative advocacy.

It was the GP who told us to call an ambulance - I would never have done so. I thought it was too much fuss. I was writhing about in pain on the floor and DM said she couldn't get me down the stairs or into a car.

I never called an ambulance - it was all done by other people on the advice of a GP

It was the GP who told us to call an ambulance

It just gave me a bit of comfort after hours in a&e and I wanted to speak up about how others were being treated too

How are you OP? What's happening x

Not sure how people have got it into their heads that DM was a nurse - she wasn't

Thank you for asking. I'm at home, a bit out of it on painkillers, hoping it'll get better as the doc said it would. Not myself at the moment or able to deal with some of the replies on here so going to bow out now but thank you to everyone who has been kind ❤

I think this post, which is way off btw, says more about you than it does about anything else.

My mother is a very intelligent and pragmatic woman who spent decades as an NHS manager (one of the good ones). She's very honest and would never 'overegg' anything.

Argh, was going to bow out but have found my fighting spirit in response to idiots on this thread 😉

Please don’t get yourself too worked up by other people on here who are posting offensive comments when they have no background to your case. Focus instead on resting your body and mind as much as possible. I hope you start to feel much stronger very soon. 💐

❤

Thank you so much ❤

All I can say is the paramedics and the Dr certainly thought I'd done the right thing coming in. And anyway, it wasn't my bloody decision.

I've had vomiting bugs, gastroenteritis and food poisoning before and didn't go to hospital. This was something different.

I'm a writer. I never said I was at death's door, but if I were, I could probably still write. It is easier than talking for me.