To be mad at people going to a&e

[Winebomb]

So I chopped the end of my finger off, blood pumping every where, so went to A&e...

I was "lucky" enough to be sat next to the triage nurse waiting to be seen. And heard every patient going through, the best was;

I have a bad spot on my bum (not infected, just hurt a bit, husband and wife showed up together)
My eye has started itching
My foot hurts a bit, I dropped the shampoo on it in the shower
I got pissed last night and punched a wall, I have a graze on my knuckles

It just goes on..

I mean really, this is an ACCIDENT OR EMERGENCY service, not a god damn mummy service..

AIBU that people just absolutely feel entitled to waste as much public money they can. why else go to hospital for any of these reasons?

Gilead they would be referred directly to mental health. A mental health crisis IS an emergency

It's hard sometimes, though, when you have no choice but to go to A&E because no other service will deal with the problem.

I've had to take DS to A&E because he had part of a tick left in him. I tried to get it out but couldn't. The GPs refuse to touch it. So I had to drag poor DS out to the hospital after a bath in the evening (gave him a bath hoping to soften the skin enough for me to get the tick remnant out), dressed in pyjamas, facing a LONG night of waiting.

Bless the nurse in paediatrics that looked at us, took a quick scan around the very full and busy unit, then obviously thought 'sod it!', grabbed what she needed and us and went to a quiet room and got the remnant of the tick out in under a minute. We were in and out so fast we didn't even have to pay for parking. If she had put us in the 'queue' we'd have been hours.

It must be so tricky for the staff to read between the lines. Years ago we took my husbands Nan to a&e as she was very ill with heart problems. Once there she proceeded to tell EVERYONE that there was really nothing wrong with her, just a few twinges and flutters. And that we were being dramatic by bringing her in and wasting everyone's valuable time. I'm sure a fair few people waiting believed her. Fortunately the nurses and doctors didn't. She had to have heart surgery the following morning. The NHS were amazing - efficient, gentle, humorous but did not manage to convince her she was not wasting their time. She was in hospital for weeks after and was still saying it when she got home 😆 God love her, we almost put it on her gravestone 💕

A lot of people don't like making a fuss and it's not until they are seen that the true nature of the issue comes out so YABU

As an ED nurse I can say that in my experience, the people that don't like to make a fuss are vastly outnumbered by the people who love making a massive fuss. The stoic, "don't make a fuss about me, I'm fine" types are practically an urban myth.

Best one I had when I worked in a&e was someone who wanted their ears syringing... they said they couldn't get appointment til the Monday (it was Saturday). I informed him we did do it there and he demanded to know why not 😂

I once let a toddler take my place in the queue. I had a head injury and wanted to get it checked out as I was feeling woozy and slurring my speech. The small child I let in front of my had shoved a bead in her nose and the GP sent them to A&E as they couldn't get it and hospital had better equipment.

I have a family member being treated for cancer and they have been given a list of symptoms to be aware of and an emergency number to call. They have been told not to call NHS 24 (111 in Scotland) as they'llngetbthe run around. Last time I went to A&E I waited 15 minutes tops and was treated in under an hour, needed stitches and an x-ray.

It's the people that really are acutely sick that I feel sorry for. Someone in horrendous pain from a kidney stone will wait while four people who have been "feeling a bit tired lately" tell their life stories to the triage nurse. Yes, the really sick cases will be triaged and given priority but since everyone has to be seen at some point it still slows the whole thing down.

@BackforGood so sitting in A&E judging people is preferable to campaigning, writing to your MP, sitting on committees and so on?

Yeah, chances are OP is the type to passively aggressive huff and puff but not do anything useful.

The person who dropped the shampoo on their foot might have been a diabetic who might have had a previous ulcer/amputation , so decided (quite correctly) to take themselves and their (possibly neuropathic) foot to A&E to get themselves on an IV antibiotic

I know on Mumsnet there is always one (usually loads) who come up with random ridiculous scenarios to defend the OP but this one is hillarious :) 10 out of 10 for effort.
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as an ED nurse I can say that in my experience, the people that don't like to make a fuss are vastly outnumbered by the people who love making a massive fuss. The stoic, "don't make a fuss about me, I'm fine" types are practically an urban myth.
But then you'd have nursing staff correcting that misconception and saying: "Actually - whilst it may seem to the untrained public that many people waiting in A&E are complete timewasters - in fact 99% of all the people who present to A&E are genuine cases who we need to see immediately."

Except they don't. Any medical professional who works in that area always comes out to say that many people who present to A&E are either overly dramatic cautious, time wasters or using completely the wrong service - because many of them are

As an ED doctor I'd have to agree with both the pps!
If it's an emergency we are the right place to be. But an emergency needs to be clearly defined. It means that you may lose life or limb if you are not seen to or require urgent intervention that can only be given in an emergency department. I'd argue that many of the examples given of an emergency don't need ED but could be dealt with by an urgent care centre or GP. For example a child with a bead up their nose is perfectly appropriate for an urgent care or minor injuries centre, or a GP could see and refer to next day ENT dressing clinic if they couldn't remove it. We're also not there because GPs don't have appointments available and patients don't look well. (Obviously excluding those who are septic, bleeding heavily etc....). There have been some very good campaigns such as Choose Wisely but people don't think it applies to them. I have stood in the middle of our full waiting room at 3am (when I was due to leave at 11pm) and advised people that they were likely to wait at least another 4 to 6 hours and to consider alternative arrangements or to leave and come back the next day due to large numbers of very sick patients requiring resuscitation. Not one person moved but they had all been triaged as safe to do so.
The other thing that frustrates me is that people think they are getting better treatment by being seen in an Emergency Department than with their GP. Yes, if you're an emergency. If you are about to die or your leg will fall off I'm your girl. If your toddler has D&V for 3 days (disclaimer:and is drinking and alert) or you have an unexplained rash, see your pharmacist or GP...they are the experts in this!
Final rant: self care. Please take some pain relief or try to stop bleeding/dress a minor wound. You may not even need to see anybody!
Sorry, rant over

Wallops - I was v good and took all my pain relief then realised something wasn't quite right. The lovely triage person found me oramorph and then they took me for an MRI. Yes, I had driven myself to hospital with cauda equina

YANBU, it's a terrible state of affairs and our wonderful health service is being taken for granted

We get it with the police as well. I had a grade 1 (emergency response call, blue lights etc) for a 'domestic in progress'

Get there.

Find dad sitting watching TV and his two boys, age 5 and 7, weren't going to bed and asking me to go up and 'tell them off to scare them'

While I was there we had a firearms job come in for a man who had barricaded his wife in the bathroom with a knife to her throat.

I wasn't my most professional to him let me tell you

I'm always very good and take pain relief first. Then the lovely nurses give me morphine (which I'm allergic to) and nearly kill me thus taking a quick a&e fix to an admission. Medics need to listen as much as patients do.

Sorry one final teeny rant.
I wonder how many people appreciate that in bringing your child with a minor illness to the ED you are not getting an expert opinion. You will generally be seen by a junior doctor who (at the present time) may have been qualified 13 months and will probably not have worked in paediatrics or general practice. A GP has 2 years post qualification general training followed by 2 to 3 years of rotating specialties including paediatrics and a prolonged period in primary care. They will see sick children day in and day out, it's their bread and butter so they are best placed to spot an unwell child and advise on all the others. i say this as a trained GP turned Emergency Medicine doctor. Most of my colleagues have significantly less experience with children's illness and what they have is focussed rightly on the sickest.

Ollivander84 I'll let you off with that one then!
Playonwurtz I agree we need to listen too. You should never be given anything (let alone morphine) that you're allergic too, there should be safety checks in place so that doesn't sound good.

I tried to walk to the MRI, woke up from the op and ate all the food because it was lush and nobody ever cooks for me, didn't need any pain relief and then got discharged 21hrs post op. The nurse was slightly "well most people are still on pain relief. And not walking around the hospital. REST"

Where I am in london, you can call 111 and get an emergency appointment with a doctor at the local hospital.

So I've been in before with tonsillitis, unable to breathe properly (also have asthma) and vomiting because my tonsils are so swollen. Except 111 have given me a dr appt. but I still had to sit in the waiting room having told the receptionist what I was there for. And then waited only 5-10 mins until I was seen, much to the moans of lots of people in the waiting room.

It is an amazing system, hopefully it's being / been rolled out elsewhere.

YANBU. Drives me nuts, even though I've only been to A&E a few times in my life. The GP surgery is just as bad. For me to go to either I would have to be in absolute agony. With one exception, I have a firearms and explosives certificate and that involves a medical. Last time I was at the GP's the waiting room was predictably packed solid, it seems some people treat it as a social gathering. Old friends seeing old friends and shaking hands asking "Oh Hi Geoff, long time no see! How are you?"
"Oh fine, great, how are you?"
"Oh never better!"

WTF are you doing in the doctors surgery then?

I have family members who seem to enjoy being "ill" and it's any excuse to go to the docs. Sneezed? Better get a doctors appointment.
Farted out of tune? Best call an ambulance.

Glad I'm so rarely in these places.

Jack Dee had it right, waiting times in A&E should be graded according to the stupidity of the accident.
"I was walking down the road and stepped on a manhole cover and it fell through and I've hurt my ankle" - fair enough, not your fault, 5 min wait.

"I swallowed a spanner"

That's fairly stupid and you will have to wait much longer.

Wall0ps
Well said. I entirely agree.

Can I add, another myth seems to be that if you go to A&E and travel there by ambulance you'll be seen more quickly than someone who has walked in or been taken there by car. This is absolutely NOT true. You're only seen more quickly if brought in by ambulance if once you've been triaged you're deemed unwell enough to need to be seen more rapidly. But similarly if you came by car/foot and were deemed equally unwell, you'd be seen equally quickly as the determining factor in how fast you need to be seen is how unwell you are and not the mode of transport by which you travelled there.

Oh gosh yes, I've been in a&e before when a very drunk man was sitting in the waiting room in a wheelchair. He asked a nurse to take him to the toilet and she said she'd be 1 minute, he said "if you don't take me right now I'll just piss myself here and now". And then just did.

I felt awful for her.

I live in Guernsey. We have no NHS. A Drs (GP) visit is £48.50. If I'd phoned them at 8.30am, I'd be guaranteed to be seen by someone today in that practice.
A prescription is £3.20.
An ambulance call out is £120. You can pay a tenner a month to the ambulance and have up to three free ambulance "trips" a year (if you don't pay into a private healthcare scheme whereupon it would be free anyway).
A&E is "free". However if once triaged they don't deem it to be an emergency you get told to make an appointment with your GP and won't be seen.
If you have a private health scheme (Mine is through my job) pretty much everything is free, including up to a significant amount of dental work).

Our specialist group is a referral system. One visit with Dr and referral straight away. (I had issues having a smear at the age of 27 and was recommended straight away to my gynae and several tests were performed (including an MRI) which were all free as done through specialist).

The specialist is somewhat two tier though (although denies it). I had a diagnosed gallstone (2cms) on 19th December 2015. I wasn't paying into a private healthcare scheme at the time so my op was end of January 2016. Had I been in a privately healthcare scheme at that time, my op would have been 20th December... (I realise 6 weeks is not long and had this been NHS I might still be waiting for the gall bladder removal).

People here tend to use St Johns ambulance first (who 8/10 refer you to A&E). We obviously don't have 111.

Just to give you a picture of what life is like without NHS on a British Island for anyone interested.

I am 27, my best guess would be that since I turned 20 there has only been one year I have not attended A&E, and that in those six years I have attended more than ten times.

This is not my choice, I do not have access to a separate minor injuries department, you just go through a different door after triage, and minor injuries is obviously only open Mon-Fri, 9-5.

I have a chronic joint condition which leads to regular soft tissue injuries and full or partial dislocations. As it is I have no idea how many x-rays I have had, enough that I often don't have one when other people probably would because they are trying to save me having too many (I think I'm on about 15 (not including dental x-rays obviously).

I hate presenting to A&E, I feel like I am totally wasting their time. A subluxed shoulder tucked into my coat and not screaming the place down generally gets me a disgusted look from the receptionist and other patients as I 'clearly am not in enough pain to have properly dislocated my shoulder' come here and let me show you how it feels.

I actually don't attend as often as I probably should, relocating my own joints for the most part and taking enough pain killers to floor a rhino (fun side effect of my condition is a reduced reaction to pain killers).

Please don't judge people on how they look in A&E, but also please don't go because your finger hurts, or you need someone to show you how your inhaler works, or you have a headache. It's not fair on the awesome staff who work there and have to take you under their duty of care.

My 3 year old put a Lego stud up his nose. It was too far up for me to hook it out.
I phoned the GP first, but they don't do Lego nasal extractions so, on their recommendation we went to a walk in clinic.
The doctor said he'd have one go at removing it and if he couldn't we'd HAVE to go to A&E. I am very glad he did get it out, I'd have felt an utter prune if I'd ended up in A&E with my silly son.
Especially as my 6 year old had been there only a few days before with a supracondylar fracture of the elbow. Everyone was brilliant.
Had we been sat the other side of the waiting room we'd have been near the reception desk and would probably been able to hear anyone booking in.