Quick question for A&E/Hospital staff/paramedics !!!!

[Quickquestionmate]

Do you ever get annoyed at patients for coming in with the same things?

I take part in a dangerous sport (eventing) and have been sent to hospital in an ambulance several times especially for cross country accidents. The staff have always been lovely to me but I was just curious if it gets frustrating seeing patients continually come in with injuries from dangerous sports?

5 a&e trips last year (either from being kicked by my horse or thrown off). It’s not because I’m a hopeless rider- cross country is extremely dangerous and I was also rebacking an ex racer which was challenging to say the least, hence the higher than usual number of injuries! Like I said, all the staff were lovely, but I was just curious from the POV of those staff about if it gets frustrating to see someone do a dangerous sport and continually end up hurt and do they see them as timewasters having to go to hospital so often? Eg other potentially dangerous behaviours like trampolining or drinking excessively, do staff feel annoyed or frustrated at patients for that?

just being nosey here on the POV of people dealing with this.😀

Wow. Have you ever thought you are maybe in the wrong job if that is your attitude to patients.

Those things are forms of self-harm. You need to stop working in mental health right now with that attitude.

But then “most of us” do not choose this as our occupation?

I don’t think I would make a very good teacher say. But if somebody working in teaching told me that they hated children, I would wonder if they were in the right job. I don’t have to be a teacher myself or even think I would make a good teacher to do that.

And sorry but the mental health nurse who gets irritated with patients that come in with self harm issues should reflect on whether that are in the right job. I actually feel sad that they think like that about their patients.

Surely people don't call an ambulance for a hurt finger or cough?!

My 89 yr old neighbour fell and broke her femur, she was cold and grey... But after the lovely paramedics had administered pain relief and got her cozy on a stretcher her eyes were sparkling and colour flooded back into her cheeks.
Obviously the pain relief, but it was amazing to see.

Sadly the last time she fell, in her home, alone, she had lain there for over a day {she didn't call for help.. } and there was no magic treatment.
You do sterling work, including helping my KO'd son after a mountain bike race {helmet on, but still knocked out}..the race organisers pay for an ambulance to be in attendance as always a couple of injuries.

@oakleaffy yes they do, all the time!

That must take the patience of a Saint. Fair play to the Paramedics .

But surely u can understand that behind nearly every addiction be it drink/drugs/substances/behaviours lies a person with some sort of trauma that they are forever trying to escape and it's often a never ending cycle because the underlying mental health problems that aren't dealt with and they leave hospital with no way of seeing a way out of that situation 🥲

@Stompythedinosaur - you’re getting a very unreasonably hard time. From one RMN to another - I appreciate and understand your honesty. It doesn’t mean you aren’t an empathetic, compassionate, kind and understanding nurse. It means you’re human.

It’s evident the posters engaging in the ‘you shouldn’t be in your job’ nonsense, know very little about working with service users with a wide range of MH conditions with varying degrees of severity and also have a lack experience of working tirelessly and relentlessly on care and treatment plans for months, sometimes years for it to end up in relapse and them back in hospital month after month. It’s not frustration at the service user, it’s frustration at the situation, it’s frustration at yourself. It’s a sad and gutting feeling to see the service user you’ve built such a good rapport and therapeutic relationship with, experience another breakdown in their mental health.

I bet the posters barraging @Stompythedinosaur with criticism haven’t considered how their words might affect his/her mental health, considering you’re all so pro mental health and know exactly how to manage/treat/prevent mental health and who should be working in it?

I knew it would involve horses before I opened the post!
No, we don’t mind. Injuries are fine. There are plenty of other frustrations with the job but this isn’t one of them!

But surely u can understand that behind nearly every addiction be it drink/drugs/substances/behaviours lies a person with some sort of trauma that they are forever trying to escape and it's often a never ending cycle because the underlying mental health problems that aren't dealt with and they leave hospital with no way of seeing a way out of that situation

Of course I can. But the question is if healthcare staff ever get irritated, and my experience is that they do.

All the folk who think that getting irritated means you shouldn't work in healthcare are very unrealistic imo. Healthcare staff are real people, not robots. I'm not sure that being irritated is the crime of the century some people are making out tbh.

I guess that'll teach me to answer a question honestly rather than telling people what they want to hear.

And no, not all drinking and drug taking is a symptom of mental illness! It can be an unwise decision, that given the patient is well and is deemed to have capacity to make that decision, has the right to make. This can then increase the likeliness of the person to engage in self-harm or mental health symptoms to exacerbate. So yes, seeing people make these unwise decisions can be frustrating. It’s not all black and white like posters on here want to make out!

.... I'm not sure that level of repeated injury is sustainable. Healing isn't like 'return to factory settings', there's scarring and bone knitting and things that still ache years after. I wouldn't want to be looking at a middle/old age marked by pain and disability if it were avoidable.

I work in ICU and tbh a shift is a shift, you just get on with it. However, this has often occurred to me with extreme sports. Serious injury can be life-changing. Not everything can be "fixed". Arthritis and mobility problems, even in middle age, are frequently the results of even successful skeletal surgery. I can only assume ppl accept the risks involved.

Thank you. I have done their job. For many years. Which is why I know they need to stop doing it if this is what they believe.

As another RMN who works in liaison psychiatry ( so mostly A&E) I would also say that Stompy is unreasonable getting a hard time. What people fail to realize is that experiencing trauma which is contributing to drinking/ drugs issues doesn't abdicate them from responsibility or ability to make unwise decisions. Most RMNs have the ability to be compassionate and professional with all patients but may feel differently inside. There are people who turn up many times a day in A&E wanting something that society can't provide, we are often left with no choice but to send them out again. There are people who think you can immediately admit them to a detox unit ( not these days) or who arrive with a bag packed demanding admission to a mental health ward when the criteria for admission is so high due to bed shortage, plus there is no need but people think they can decide they want to be admitted for a rest. The Services needed to treat complex trauma don't exist in the nhs in the immediate for people, waiting times for DBT and psychology are years.
Substance misusers have to want to change and this is hard but all rehab programs will require evidence of demonstrating comittment to making some changes.
The reality is that some people attend A&E for what are described as mental illness but are not and its frustrating, people who have a court case coming up who think mental health contacts will help, or that we can move them to new accommodation. People who have been violent when drunk and say it was due to mental illness ( the number of violent incidents related to mental illness is actually tiny). The man who I saw who had killed his cats with a machete , thrown them over the hedge and was sat saying he was annoyed by them did not need to be in A&E with ' mental illness'.
These are the situations that cause frustration and yes at times I wish I could say 'get out ' but I don't let it show.

Your attitude is equally wrong, IMO.

All the situations you describe all clearly require intervention of some type, both for the individual and for society. A big issue is that all of health, care and law enforcement are grotesquely underfunded.

Stop attacking the individuals who are presenting for help.

Your judgmental attitude may be a way you protect your own sanity working in a tough job, but it doesn't make it right.

There are people who turn up many times a day in A&E wanting something that society can't provide, we are often left with no choice but to send them out again. This says a lot about where we are as a society. Early intervention would save a bloody fortune and much trauma.

I'd never get annoyed about this - re-injuries happen, if there was something that could be done about it then going to A&E is the right thing to do. I would see them as separate instances rather than 'the same thing'
The thing that pisses me off is people coming in for the same chronic issue that has been extensively investigated in the past. For example someone with abdo pain that hasn't changed who has shopped around different A&Es, had every test/scan under the sun and the same conclusion has been reached every time. What do they expect us to do about it? They tend to be the more difficult demanding patients who never want to leave and have a specific investigation or intervention in mind that isn't indicated.

In short, if something actually needs an A&E visit I'll never be annoyed!

This is the same point as @carefullycourageous is making. Turn up requesting genuine emergency help - fine. Turn up with a chronic problem that should have been dealt with elsewhere, yeah you should have maybe looked elsewhere first.

Pain management is appalling/non-existent though, and care for chronic conditions also dreadful.

I understand why people are not happy to be left with 'fuck off and live in misery for years' which is the reality for many people.

If you look at the waiting lists for surgery, the numbers of people living with ongoing pain, discomfort, worry and limitations is growing all the time.

I don't blame people for rocking up. They can't get a GP appointment, can't access treatment, will wait years for surgery - the whole system is shit (many thanks to all who vote Tory btw) and a growing number of individuals are a bit desperate.

(Paramedic) For a few years we had the most frequent caller in the country on our patch (calling multiple times a day). He was, no doubt, mentally ill, but he was also a nasty but highly intelligent alcoholic, who was abusive to anyone who he thought he could see a weakness in. He even locked my lovely colleague up in the house with him ultimately resulting in the premature end of her career. Eventually he was sent to prison for breaching his ASBO.

He was a mentally ill substance abusers. But I am confident when I say that there was not a paramedic, police officer, A&E nurse/doctor or mental health nurse (or neighbour, oh his poor poor neighbours) who wasn't irritated by him. That's doesn't make us bad people or unsuitable for our careers, it makes us human.

The people judging stompy and others on her have lived very sheltered lives. Nice people become sick, injured, elderly or mentally ill as do nasty manipulative arseholes, it isn't always the mental illness that makes them behave the way they do, after all many mentally ill people are absolutely lovely and remain so throughout their period of crisis.

I have not lived a sheltered life and have relevant experience. I think the idea that messy/unpleasant people can just 'be nicer' is very naive.

The case @EgonSpengler2020 cites is an extreme - clearly that person should have been dealt with earlier by relevant services, be that care, health or law enforcement or a combination.

Having a personality disorder, being an alcoholic, having mental health problems bring a person in contact with services. Better services and earlier treatment for underlying causes would stop a lot of repeat visits. Yes there would always be a small number of hardcore cases but there should be resources to deal with it. We can't expect these people not to exist, that is just unrealistic.

This is the same point as @carefullycourageous is making. Turn up requesting genuine emergency help - fine. Turn up with a chronic problem that should have been dealt with elsewhere, yeah you should have maybe looked elsewhere first.

Sorry, tagged wrong poster. Should be @dottycat123

@Stompythedinosaur I get it

It’s all well and good people with NO experience rocking up to tell us we’re in the wrong jobs and to ‘leave right now’, but if we all left nursing after a bad day, there’d be none of us left. I’m not an RMN but have dealt with my fair share of MH patients and have gone home in tears many a time because of how difficult it can be (most memorably: four women in my acute bay of 10, all of them in with ODs, knowing I had nobody to special them whilst looking after my other 6 poorlies, all four women formed a friendship and took it in turns to abscond in different directions because they knew I’d have to neglect my other patients to work on getting them back to the ward) so yeah, I’ll admit to having been irritated by their actions and I challenge anyone to say they wouldn’t have been.

People expect HCP's to be angels who never get irritated about anything Well trust me we really do get pissed off. Getting called out 10 mins before the end of my shift to some pissed up fool who has injured themselves doing something stupid, or to a neurotic parent who's child just needs a dose of calpol or to someone who thinks an ambulance is a taxi to hospital really does get on my tits tbh! People need to start taking some sort of responsibility for themselves, the NHS cannot sustain this level of abuse.

Having elderly people laying on the floor for hours on end with a broken hip because all the available ambulances are busy treating drunks and addicts also really gets to me!