To think 8 hrs in A&E is too long?

[kansasmum]

My mum is 85 and fell yesterday and was taken to hospital by ambulance. I went with her and although we were seen by HCA within half an hour it was 3 hours before we saw a Dr and over 4 house before she was X-rayed. Finally after 8 hours she was transferred to the ward. After much nagging from me.
I haven't been to A&E much here since we moved back from the US but there was very little communication from any staff and I had to repeatedly ask staff to gain any information.

I know it was Saturday night and it was busy but I think keeping an 85 yr old lady in A&E for 8 hours is not on.
I used to be a registered nurse but haven't worked for 10 years but no-one used to wait for 8 hours when I worked in A&E.

AIBU to think this is not on? Or is this the norm these days?

The nurses were fine and when we saw the Dr she was good and efficient - so many drunks though and idiots like this one guy who said he'd smoked too much weed and caused him to have panic attack?! At 2am I went to the loo and there were 6 people on trolleys in the corridor ( they'd run out of cubicles)all who were drunk, very obviously so and I appreciate they may have fallen and hurt themselves but doesn't help an already overburdened system

Mum was discharged yesterday pm and is doing ok thanks.

Hippo: she has paid for it though! The NHS is free at point of treatment - not free. An 85 year old would have invested taxes in the NHS and be entitled to a decent level of care. 8 hours in A&E falls below that level IMO.
I agree it seems to be the norm now though - I broke my arm on Thursday and had was told i would be give a temporary plaster cast while I waited for a fracture clinic, where it could be assessed by a consultant. The consultant appointment is 2 weeks away, so it will already have started healing. Hopefully it will heal in the way it is supposed to - otherwise it will get complicated!

Softly, rather than bleating about people that don't follow whatever convoluted and inefficient system their GP clinics have devised for appointments, more work should be done to introduce systems that actually work for working people - if it were easier to visit a GP, people would be less likely to visit A&E.

in the end he couldn't get an appointment and it got so worse one weekend that i had no choice but to take him to A&E.

^^^

This kind of thing is the problem. No you did have a choice, you could have gone to a walk in clinic, registered with a different Dr, seen someone near work as a 'temporary resident'.

I'm not saying it would be easy and your dh should have been able to see his GP, you are right about that but A and E is just that, for accidents this wasn't and emergencies and this may have been when you took dh to the hospital but wasn't for the two weeks previously.

blame the Tories

It should be easier to see a GP. Ours does one night a week after 6pm for an hour. It's not that impressive.

There are 4 GPs working at the surgery, and two nurses.

I cut my finger horrendously in the summer. Could not stop it bleeding, very deep at the knuckle. I had no idea if i needed stitches. Rang GP surgery, explained what i'd done and asked receptionist if anyone there could take a peep at it for me sometime that day.

Nope. No one can look at your finger today. Go to A&E.

... I sat and bled a bit more and thought about the 4,5,6 + hour wait at A&E. I felt like crap anyway (preg., dizzy, very hot weather, swollen ankles, all day morning sickness) and decided i just couldn't face the drive (40 mins) or the wait. I dealt with it at home as best i could.

Turns out i should have had stitches. I have nerve damage to my finger, and it's numb now. There's something wrong with the GPs system as it stands for sure.

Having to take a day off work and ring the surgery at 08.30 on the off chance that there will be an appointment, then have to ring again at 2pm because there weren't any in the morning is a hopeless situation for anyone who has a job, has to do a school run, is a carer - almost anyone really unless you are a person who literally has nothing else to do.

There are times when you are not too ill to work, but have a worry like a breast lump or similar, but it is almost impossible to get an appointment at a time that isn't going to inconvenience your employer, or get you into trouble for not getting your children to school on time.

I really do think that the silly appointment systems we have now are partly responsible for the increase in A&E attendance. Many of the WICs are being closed next year too. I have found them very useful in the past and I think A&E departments will collapse under the strain.

I spent four hours once with acute urine retention , hadn't peed since 10pm the night before and this was 6pm the next day.. Nurse warned me I had a long wait ahead of me and said if I ended up in severe pain or couldn't walk, move due to pain just to start screaming and they'd come to help.. Didn't get any painkillers until a good eight hours after I'd come in.

It is too long, but it is the norm on a sat night particularly - thank the drunks for that. If it isn't life threatening you just have to wait. I ended up at a & e when dd bashed her head once - went to a wLk in clinic who said yes it's probably ok but have to refer you in case, cos we're just nurses. Waited 3 hours at the clinic, then another 6 at the hospital. Plus travel. Joy. Another time with 7 month old and gastroenteritis, gradually scaled up to a & e, after 4 hours waiting she started throwing up yellow and we got a nurses attention- no dr for another 2 hrs. I once nearly sliced the tip of a finger off, and like fluffyraggies just couldn't be bothered getting attention for it.
The NHs is collapsing, decades of cuts and political mismanagement.

I had a 8 hour wait with ds who had injured his ankle at about 22months old. He couldn't stand on it, but wasn't in pain, but GP on the telephone told me to take him to A&E.
However as I saw the other children that came in and I'll tell you that he was correct to be triaged to the bottom of the list. Wasn't pleasant being there for that long-he was asleep way before we got seen, but much less pleasant for the people who were dashed straight in with their children. (children's A&E)

Some surgeries are not good on appointments.
Ours is brilliant. I could phone up now and ask them to see one of my dc with a head injury, and I'd be seen within half an hour, and they'd tell me whether to go to A&E and send me with a note if needing to go.
But another up the road (which on paper is very similar) will probably offer you an appointment in 2 weeks time for the baby with pneumonia.

But the other problem is people go to A&E for unnecessary reasons. At other times I've been at A&E I've seen things like a 17yo girl (know she was 17yo because she had a major strop because she didn't want to sit in the children's section) who had a cut on her leg... which had stopped bleeding by the time she saw the triage nurse, who looked and said it didn't even really need a plaster (although gave her one after her mother had a strop).
Or the lad who was about 13yo (voice had broken so I doubt he was younger) who had been sick. Once. Apparently his mum brings him in every time he is sick because (in her words) "You never know". No other medical needs, because I was talking to her for quite a long time and asked her. Poor lad, I think, was very embarrassed.
And I've seen people on here make statements along the lines of "I always would go to A&E if my dc (not baby age) had a temperature of over 38.5deg.
Well if I did that, I estimate that over the last 10 years I'd have had about 10-12+ extra A&E trips per year to be told they had an ear infection, tonsilitis, or unknown virus which could be treated at home.

You could always pay for it. I understand private treatment is wonderful.

Mum was discharged yesterday pm and is doing ok thanks.

So, after all that, there was nothing wrong with her

LaGuardia, I do trust that was a joke? Clearly there was something wrong - an injury - which has now been successfully treated.
And many of us can't afford private healthcare.

Sometimes even going to to the walk in is not good enough anyway..

I went to the walk in waited 4 hours with pain so bad I could not sit/stand comfy they looked and said leave it and see if it gets better.

The next morning 3am I was up crying in agony and taken to a & e where I waited two hours they then decided I was in too much pain and moved me out the back 8am I finally had a canular in my arm (6th attempt) by 5pm I had been into surgery and was discharged with the next month off with the nurse coming out daily to repack my wound.

I now don't trust the walk in, just like how they missed toncilitus and the next day the doctor caught it but by that point it was so bad I couldn't swallow..

I hope she's ok now the waits can be stupid, but for some of us if the doctor is closed there is not a chance I'm going to the walk in I value my Health and life too much

Yes Trapper posting a perfectly valid viewpoint is "bleating"

I have my own business and a fairly high stress job with varying amounts of long distance travel. And if I need to see a Dr I sit my ass down between 8-10 and wait because I'm not entitled enough to think my work is a priority over my GPs work.

Do you know how much they do already? Clinics, OOH,open surgeries, home visits, triage calls, audits, constant training and on top of that mounds of paperwork.

No not all surgeries have perfect systems but they try their best and "working" people need to work with them rather than some attitudes of "no they should change around my all immovable importance or I'll go to OOH / a&e"

As has been pointed out ... we DO pay for it!

We pay for the NHS via taxes, weather we use it or not. Which is how it should be of course, but please would people stop saying it's free and therefore we should be grateful for anything.

I have to say that when my husband took me into A&E as an emergency with a high temperature following an operation five days earlier A&E were fantastic and I was seen within five minutes so if there is a real problem that might be life threatening they will prioritise you. It turned out that I had blood poisoning and ended up in a HDU for a few days.

If you want more GP appointments then you'll need to pay more tax to get them. GPs do about 90% of the medical work of the NHS for about 9% of the budget. Funding is going down but demand is going up. That's why it is hard to get an appointment and GPs are doing their best to manage the demand. If there's lack of provision in your area blame the health board or the PCT for not investing in more capacity.

I think the A&E wait sounds a bit long but not unusual on a Saturday night.

Yes, I am happy to pay more tax

Problem is a and e take the strain from the problems elsewhere.

They end up with the idiots who don't need to be in a and e in the first place, or who couldn't possibly take a few hours off work to go to the GP so go to a and e instead.

They also end up with people who have been ignored by gps - I took DS to a and e on Friday with a bad asthma attack, he had been at the GP on Friday who refused to give him medication which would have stopped it getting that bad.

A and e get all the stick but they also get to deal with the problems which aren't really problems with a and e but with attitudes and the system overall.

It's not acceptable, but it is standard, especially on a Saturday night. I once waited 24 hours to go to A&E on a Sunday with a fractured foot because I didn't want to be seen with all the drunks, who have usually managed to do themselves some rather nasty damage and so automatically jump ahead of you...

OP your DM did not wait 8 hours to see someone.

(1) she had an ambulance & staff to take her to hospital
(2) she was assessed within 30 mins

sounds like excellent service to me.

Technically, she wasn't waiting receiving no investigations or examinations but no YANBU in thinking it was a longish wait from ambulance to ward.

Does being seen by a Health care assistant count as being assessed? I thought Triage was always done by trained RN's. As I said in my op she WAS seen in 30 mins by HCA. In my opinion she should have been seen by a TRAINED member of staff quicker than she was.

Laguardia- you need to read more carefully. Yes she's ok considering she has a fractured shoulder, large hand laceration, very bruised knees and some bruised ribs. Yes she's just peachy- nothing wrong at all.