To be really annoyed at the NHS today?

[BlueNeighbourhood]

As a first point, I want to say how awesome the police are...which I'm sure will become apparent in this thread.

My brother was out last night at a local pub with his friends, he wasn't too drunk, just merry and decided to leave around 9pm to get a taxi home. Somehow from leaving the pub he's tripped and fell into the road, smashing his face up and some damage to his foot. Fortunately a police riot van was passing and found him in the street, picked him up and took him straight to the local walk in centre. They stayed with him right until me and my parents got there last night (my parents had both had a glass of wine with dinner so didn't want to drive).

So at the walk in, we were told they wouldn't even clean up the wound on his face or X-Ray his foot, he should go to hospital. They told us we should take him as an ambulance would be a 90 minute wait. At this point he's quite concussed and struggling to stay awake. So I drove straight to hospital.

In A&E it's two flights of stairs and along a corridor in a temporary box room while waiting for a new one to be constructed. Poky, too hot and very much squished in. It then took two hours to be seen by a triage nurse followed by another two hours to see a nurse who said she couldn't do anything and needed to wait for a doctor who wasn't available.

All the while the room is getting more and more full, he's complaining of headaches and pain in his foot and wants to sleep. In the end at 3.30am we took him home and my Mum watched over him all night while he slept to make sure he was okay.

It just seems so fundamentally wrong in there, it was an accident and he's been in hospitals for more than four hours without someone as much as taking some cotton wool to his face. No help whatsoever! But I have to say the police in all of this were so kind and great. It's just the NHS was a complete let down.

And breathe...rant over!!

YABU - I fractured a bone in my ankle three weeks ago - I went over on it and thought I'd just sprained it on a Friday afternoon, but by Friday evening it was generally swollen with a huge extra golfball swelling on my ankle that was painful to touch and agony to walk on. I arrived in A&E at 8pm on Friday evening and was finally on the way home at 5am Saturday morning. I was warned when I arrived that they were busy and I would be waiting a while ... I was triaged with a nurse by 9:30, X-rayed at 10pm and then waited until 4:45am for a doctor to become available to look at my X-ray and say "Yep there's a hairline fracture there, here's some painkillers, a Beckham boot, some crutches and an appointment to Fracture Clinic on Monday. Till then just keep off your foot as much as possible and keep taking the painkillers"

Occasionally between 10pm and 5am I considered going home, but then I was in so much pain I decided against it. I spent most of those six/seven hours sitting in the waiting room with about 5/6 other people. Between 10 and 4am only one person got seen, because on the other side of the doors to the cubicles it was absolute chaos with ambulances bringing people in, and that was just a Friday night, I would totally expect a Saturday to be even busier.

Unless you are in need of immediate treatment, or are bleeding out on the floor of reception, you will have to wait your turn just like everyone else. As for the "without someone as much as taking some cotton wool to his face" comment .. were the six hands attatched to the three people accompanying him to hospital all injured too? If not, why the hell couldn't you get some paper towels for him to wash his face with if he couldn't do it himself? You complain about there not being enough staff to treat patients, yet also want the staff to go around washing patients faces when they have two perfectly functional hands to do it themselves!

ynbu ud think with 120 billion pounds spending and the fith biggest workforce of 1.5million people theyd be able to do better but they decide to spend it on paying more for painkillers than you would at tesco or any other shop but they have money to remove tattoos.

Hi OP, have you complained yet?