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?

Sorry correction- I thought I'd posted she'd fractured her shoulder but I didn't my mistake. Apologies.

Depends what training the Hca had done. But she was seen by someone who will have noted her condition. They also had the notes from the paramedics who had taken her in.

I can only assume that these people that think the NHS is free don't actually, and never have, worked for a living

Anyway, yes I think 8 hours is way too long but especially for an 85 year old with potentially broken bones.

I also think drunks should go at the bottom of waiting list regardless of their injuries. Weekends are hell at a&e. Saturday afternoon it's full of footballers and at night it's full of Drunks.

But it wasn't an 8 hour wait to be seen though was it?

It was a four hour wait to be seen and X-rayed. Some time I imagine actually been delt with and then a 3-4 hour wait for a bed on the ward.

Which while not great isnt as bad as an eight hour wait to be seen.

That sounds like good service to me. My dad spent two nights on a trolley in a corridor,waiting for a bed. He is 74 years old,and a little unstable on his feet so needed help to get off the trolley to get to the bathroom. Luckily the other patients were very helpful. Its not the staff but the cutbacks that caused it.

Hope your mum feels better.
8 hours with an admission at the end sounds like a good outcome to me.... Sorry she had to go through the waiting game though.

My experience of a and e was 10 hours watching accidents and emergencies coming again and again, as I passed out with pain, and vomited constantly. Tbh, my excruciating kidney stone wasn't as important as life saving medicine those cut up accident victims needed.
And I got seen eventually, put on a drip, x- rayed, fed pain special relief and discharged eventually. Back home to breastfed in time for the first feed.

8 hours is quite long, but I think that we forget how long some stuff takes.

2 weeks ago I went to the ER (in the US, paid for by private insurance). I had been triaged/on the list by a walk in clinic who transferred me, so already in the system before I got there.

I waited half an hour to see someone, who took a load of blood tests. Then another half hour for a doctor, then they had to wait for the blood results, then they needed to try something else, wait for that result, then wait for a CT scan. Someone else was already in there, so had to wait, then the results take an hour to process etc etc.

I think it was about 6 hours (not sure, I had a lot of pain killers by the end), before they finally reached a decision.

A broken bone may seem quite straight forward, but don't forget that they have to wait for equipment & staff to be ready, get results, analyse, discuss etc.

Better to wait a while and get the right treatment than rush it and get it wrong.

You've lived in the US recently and you think 8 hrs is a long time to be in A&E?? We routinely waited longer in ER in Arizona when DD was having respiratory problems. We'd ring after hours emergency unit and be told "go to ER but make sure you take her meds and her SVN with you so she can have breathing treatments in the waiting area until she's seen." Unless you were practically non-responsive, it was "present health insurance card, pay up, pull up a chair, and wait."

Alice, there used to be a target that everyone should be seen and dealt with within 4 hours. Obviously urgent cases were dealt with much more quickly.

8 hours seems ok to me op sorry. my own dm was a similar time with a fractured hip and broken arm so more serious injuries. she was kept warm, drugged up and safe. we had to wait for a free bed.

why were you constantly nagging the staff?

I think all those moaning need to see what happens when someone needs absolute medical priority in this country, when there's a bad accident/injury.

they get seen immediately. that's why others have to wait.

I think 'accident' and 'emergency' should be two separate departments.
And if you're there for an 'emergency' and you're still waiting 8 hours later, then it wasn't an emergency.

Don't think they have dropped the 4 hour target - DP works in A&E and he says they are fined for every patient that 'breaches'.

8hrs is too long, and it is not the norm. So far this financial year in England 95.9% of patients have been in and out of A&Es in 4hrs or less (whether to go home or be admitted to hospital).

The current govt relaxed the target from 98% to 95% in 2010

softlysoftly and sashh maybe i should have explained what the problem was - DH had been getting headaches and light sensitivity on and off for 2 /3 months (we thought it was perhaps migraines or eye strain related). he'd tried to get a GP appointment to get it checked but in the end he took half a day off to get to an optician appointment in case it was an eye thing - to which they said they could see pressure but nothing alarming enough to worry - the next day he woke up to no vision in one eye, and darkness/barely able to see out of the other barely able to move for the pain.

it wasn't something that he'd been unwilling to take half a day's annual leave for. it probably wouldn't have been preventable, if he had got to the GP beforehand for a checkup/referall - but it would have made that saturday a whole lot less scary for us, and may have given us enough time to know what the problem was/avoid some of the damage to his worse eye.

but i guess we'll never know, since neither of us was able to get him a gp appointment to investigate, and probably no one would have been able to predict how quickly something can turn into a concern into one which was very scary.

(iv'e never heard of registering as a "temporary" resident near a place of work though.)

There is still a target of 4 hours. When hospitals don't meet it we lose funding. Patients are triaged red,orange yellow green. You then go into a box. Reds and oranges are brought through as they are life threatening. Yellows next then greens. People turn up at AE with earache toothache urine infections or problems they have had for weeks and should have gone to GP about eg constipation. We need to treat the earache within 4 hours too so we don't lose money even though they shouldn't be there.