To think I've just wasted 5 hours in A&E

[Littlelanecountrygirl]

DD hurt her finger at school yesterday. This morning it was swollen and v painful.

Dutifully head to minor injuries where they X-ray it expecting they'll just strap it up. Radiographer and nurse both say it can't be strapped and needs a cast. It's the fifth metacarpal in her hand not her finger. Hand swollen and can't bend little finger anymore.

Turn up at A&E which is like a war zone. No seats, no floor space standing room only. See the nurse after 30 mins she agrees it needs a cast, wait for doctor.

4 hrs and 10 minutes later the doctor calls us in. Abruptly accuses DD of punching something and that she has a boxers fracture. DD repeated that she didn't punch anything, injury was at school when she collided with a friend in PE. Doctor says well ok then (eye rolls at her) manipulates her finger round (DD has tears now) and then says

Oh we can just strap that .

Two bits of tape around her finger, not even a splint. DD crying in pain still and a £6 parking ticket later we finally leave.

Surely we could have just had it strapped in minor injuries 4 hours earlier?!

Your asthma/chest infection combo?

If it's in reference to me hanging around re the asthma attack - no - I'd already been discharged and sent on my way when the nurse spotted me - she was going around the department doing patient surveys. I couldn't answer her questions which rang alarm bells to her and she got someone else. If she hadn't have been passing I'd have still been getting my shoes on and out the door because I'd already been told to go home.

IT IS NOT A FREE HEALTH SERVICE

Of course people are entitled to complain about a service that doesn't meet their needs. A service we ALL PAY FOR - well, those of us who pay our tax & NI.

Op. He sounds obnoxious. I'd be concerned he couldn't see past his attitude & do the right thing by DD. Maybe visit your GP if you are concerned.

Draylon it's a cross I have to bear!!

Most of my experiences have been nothing but wonderful (not the whole being ill lark obviously! I mean the staff are amazing). I'm just demonstrating that incompetence sometimes does happen.

Sorry Effie x-posted you.

A&E is ridiculously overstretched at the best of times. So I am.sympathetic to most mistakes made. I don't know how true it is as another patient told me but there was apparently 126 patients in that dept that night.

The irony is if you'd have typed about having spent 5 hours in a and e and only come home with some micro pore strapping nearly everyone would have asked why you were wasting taxpayers money in a and e when you could have gone to MI!

You have every right to be cross with the dr and their attitude. They were unkind. By I think you have to accept that the treatment plan you followed was set by protocols - most likely on worst case senario

youarenotkiddingme I agree.

Annoying OP but these things happen. Medical opinions do vary.

DS cut his lip badly once, I took him to local A&E who decided he needed plastic surgeon to fix it (after lengthy wait) because of the type of wound. Referred him to children's hospital in nearest major city next morning. He wasn't allowed to eat or drink as he'd be having a general anaesthetic.

Arrived at big hospital next morning at the appointed hour, ds starving, and after seeing consultant we were sent home with a tube of vaseline!

Yes, it was annoying to waste all that time but overall I was relieved that it wasn't worse. We went out for cake & then went home. And ds now has barely a scar from the injury.

So a radiographer and a nurse (who aren't drs) gave threw in their 2ps worth and you would rather trust them than a doctor? Who actually went to medical school and trained to read X-rays? Whereas the radiographer is trained only to take x rays, and the nurse to do strapping / casting.
And you just explained that the a and e was like a war zone and you were seen by a doctor who was trying to get through all those patients. Fed up of people using the NHS and and then complaining about the outcome. Next time go pay to be seen privately or train to be a doctor yourself.

Part of the problem is so called MIU that cant seem to treat minor injuries, they do vary though, some oare really useful and provide a great service, some are not so good and send too much to A&E. I think it depends who they are staffed with.
OP is right, it was a waste, not just of her time but a waste of A&E time too. We cant complain about over crowded A&E units not coping when we cant find an effective system for minor injuries to be treated elsewhere.

To the poster who said greedy Consultants were costing the NHS too much - total bollocks!! They are bloody good value for money actually.

Heh these threads always turn out the same. Give it a few years and people will get grief for not being considerate enough to die rather than take up precious resource

Seriously Koala ? Do you say that to anyone who has a complaint about anything? Go and train to do that job yourself and don't you dare to be unhappy unless you do? Train to do every job under the sun or put up and shut up?

Doctors are just people, they make mistakes and very, very often you could see 5 in a row about the same thing and get 5 different opinions - there's as much art as there is science to medicine. As in every profession some doctors are better than others and the worst ones are the ones who believe they are always right.

Sometimes an experienced nurse or other specialised professional will know better than a relatively inexperienced doctor or a non specialist/ specialist doctor operating outside their area.

Koala101 nurse practitioners have extended training that includes exactly the same training and modules as Dr's, I know, I've just completed it in conjuction with Dr's/medical students.

I'm sorry you had to wait that long it wasn't acceptable. And I hope your DD is feeling better?

The issue though isn't with MIU - if they don't feel competent to treat the injury they must send you to A and E rather than bodge it. The doctor (hopefully) has more experience and training (and may have called orthopaedics (bone doctors) about the X-ray) and so was trained to help. So even if you didn't need the equipment available in A and E you did need the resources (the doctor).

The problem was you had to wait too long which is due to underfunding about which you can definitely and should complain but to your MP not the hospital.

It sounds to me like the doctor may have been trying to make a joke- who did you punchhey? But I wasn't there. The bit where he moved it around was probably necessary as it was the examination and this how he knew it only needed splinting. He should however of explained it would hurt in advance to your daughter and offered pain relief. If this didn't happen you could consider complaining about the dr to PALS.

The key thing is that you have a fracture clinic appotment soon when you can see the specialist.

SIB09 - ANPs have much the same traning as doctors but often not covering the breath of subjects as their traning is shorter. This means that they can be more specialist in certain areas but maybe not know so much about others so it is possible that the MIU ANP wasn't so happy with hand fractures.

You must be joking right? Radiograohers out red dots on x rays that basically a child could spot a fracture on. An an inexperienced doctor would not ask a radiographer to read an X-ray - they would
Ask a more experienced doctor.

nurse practitioners have extended training that includes exactly the same training and modules as Dr's, I know, I've just completed it in conjuction with Dr's/medical students

Took part in some training along with doctors and medical students = basically the same as five or six years of medical school. Right.

Also radiographers are not trained to treat fractures. Don't get me started on nurse practitioners.....

Klaphat I should clarify, I was referring to history taking, physical assessments, diagnosis etc in minor injuries as this particular post was referring to. I think alot of people are niaive to this level of training in such posts. It is extended training beyond 3-4 years of nurse education.

Nurses are not doctors and this isn't what I meant, what I was trying to get accross is that at that level they are very skilled and highly educated practitioners, not just 'finger strappers' as the previous commenter had said, or 'just radiographers' that are taking pictures - people arn't just let loose on patients if they dont have the skills, but I can appreciate my post maybe didnt reflect this so apologies.

Agree with Annie - the NHS is not a free service! We all pay hundreds of pounds a month on tax and NI which feeds into the health service.

However this was just one of those circumstances that couldnt be helped, I dont think anyone was to blame really. Better to see a doctor and get the all clear than see a doctor and have something seriously wrong!

Pity we don't have private clinics like they have abroad. I'd happily pay £30 to avoid sitting in A&E for something minor but still requiring a doctors opinion.

I'm with the people who say the problem with the waiting rooms is friends and relatives taking up space. I was in A&E last week on my own, GP referral. Everyone else had at least two people with them. This was adults bringing two companions. Why ffs?

In my opinion part of the problem is we now have MIU instead ofA andE depts spread out over cities or counties, due to cut backs or "increased efficiency" " centres of excellence" " specalisation " so you have the same or increased population heading to one unit instead of several. Less staff, less cost, less service, longer waits.
We should all be complaining about this erosion of our health service

Of course its not helped by people taking all the family along with them, I have a friend when her father fell and broke a hip not only was she there at a and e but also aunt, uncle in wheelchair, cousin, cousins husband... but they were a close family,extremely worried and wanted to support each other.
In days gone by the broken hip would have been diagnosed in one of our city's 4 a and e depts, assessed, then transfered to specialised hospital. We now have one casualty, the orthopeadic hospital has closed, land sold to housing developer

You sometime will need two companions, one to drive the casualty to hospital but there will be no parking so another companion will be needed to help take the casualty into a andE. We had to do this when one dc broke a foot

Each time I've gone to minor injuries for a potential x ray they haven't been able to do one. It they'll do one but don't have anyone around who can look at it for 3 days.

So now I just head to A&E if i think an x ray may be needed

I have no idea how it should be treated and hope everything is okay for your daughter but I have to be a pedant and say a fracture of the 5th metacarpal is actually a scrappers fracture as it (commonly) occurs in people who don't know how to throw a punch. A trained boxer will fracture their 2nd or 3rd metacarpal.

Sorry I couldn't resist.