A & E Wait Time Overnight With NO Doctors!!

[ShabbyNat]

Last Saturday night I arrived at my local A & E at 7.45pm by ambulance, with lights & sirens going with a suspected stroke.
Went through Triage within about 20 minutes after being kept waiting in the back of the ambulance for 30 minutes, which meant the ambulance could not go back out to help anyone else in that time!!
After Triage, I then sat in A & E until 5am Sunday morning, with obs only being done once & me asking several times "what was I waiting for?"-bloods, "how long is the wait for my bloods to be taken?"-no bloods, your waiting to see the doctor, "how long to see the doctor?"-there are no doctors in A & E!!
Lots of nurses & cleaners though, with the cleaners looking bored stiff as no cleaning really needed doing as no treatments were going ahead & nobody was really moving about much as it was overnight-too tired!!, & nobody really eating as too tired & ill !!
I ended up walking out at 5am & going to my GP on Monday morning, who diagnosed Bells Palsy.
So, my AIBU is, after stewing on it for a week now, AIBU to be getting quite angry about an A & E department who did not have even 1 doctor in the whole department overnight to actually see anyone??

It’s awful but you are angry at the wrong people - this is all on Boris. The state of the health service is so bad - overwork, short staffing, low pay - that fewer and fewer people are training to come into the service so the problems get worse and worse.

If the government improved salaries so we could all at least afford to live, and brought back the bursaries to train then it wouldn’t be so bad.

My local GP has no available appointments until September.

Mental health team? a friends teenager has been incredibly vocal about his intent to commit suicide and they've been on a waiting list to see a counsellor for 10 months. There are no mental health teams.

I understand you are incredibly busy, and overworked and it is horrendous for everyone. But I do agree with a previous poster, in that it sounds as though you don't have an awareness on what facilities are actually available to people at the moment.

I'm sure the people who's family members are forever damaged or dead are just thrilled for those people

I think this thread is it for me. If this is how the public see us as nurses. I think I'm done. I'm done with working in a system where people think it's acceptable to scream at you.

I've been thinking it for a while c. Probably is the straw that broke the camels back. I'll put my notice in tonight

I had this recently no doctors from midnight but apparently nurse practitioners had taken over had a 5 hour wait.

Sorry, should of made it clearer in my post-my anger is towards the politicians/government, for doing what what theyve done/are still doing to the NHS!! Over the last 25 years, Ive had good service from several departments of the same hospital-including A & E several times, for me & family.
I really do think the staff do a brilliant job with the recources theyve got, but they do need more & more staff to provide a better service & this comes down to the government!! Im really sorry to hear of others whove had bad experiances, far worse than mine. I think my anger comes from the fact-like a pp said, that I was worried that I was having a stroke & nothing was being done & no communication saying its more than likely Bells Palsy!!

Quite honestly A&E is probably at breaking point because you can't get a gp appointment and mental health services are useless or don't even answer the phone and if they do your probably told to go to a a&e anyway.

We went to A&E last night having "prebooked" via NHS 111
50 min wait in a queue outside to be told it would be approx 7 hours to be seen

I really don't understand why people are saying of course there was a doctor there.

Actually it is entirely possible that there wasn't. And no, the A&E dept would not shut down. Although in an ideal world it probably should. Instead, exactly what happened to OP will happened, a triage nurse takes over and patients wait until a doctor is available.

@BettyBoopTheThird i think a dept with no doctor (or middle grade equivalent) would be shut.
they won’t meet the commissioning requirements to run an ED without one. I do clinical risk. You couldn’t leave a hospital ED with no doctor but you might be short staffed.

The NHS got in this state under this govt.
How many of the people on this thread moaning voted for them? It’s a funding/ brexit thing primarily. And working at the moment is causing staff moral injury so they are leaving which is worsening the situation.

I do mostly elective stuff but the demands that we do 105% of our pre covid work in a system that functions less well has seriously upset me. I’m empty after the pandemic. I can’t work harder to fight a system.

Not meeting the 4 hr wait in ED is a Tory govt phenomenon. It was the Blair govt that introduced it. ED used to work well. Now it doesn’t.

But no one has said anything negative about how they see nurses on this thread, have they? The anger is at the system. Surely you’re angry at the system too?!

Do you think people shouldn’t point out that 7 hour waits are unacceptable?

I do see this a lot on MN with certain careers. Any critism of the running and functionality is perceived as a personal attack..

Not everything is about you.

If you're heart and head aren't in it anymore, please do leave. It's not healthy for you, and as someone who has been on the receiving end of and witnessed health care practitioners who so clearly just hate their job, it is not healthy or fair on us patients either.

I don't for a second undermine a nurses job, there's no denying the difficulty. But it is not a job you should be in if you do not want to be. I witnessed a nurse snap at a patient who had been just been told their cancer was terminal, that "at least you don't have to be stuck in here doing overtime for pittance like me"...... no, instead they were stuck in there until palliative care could be arranged and the patient could go home to die. But the nurse was so agitated, so angry that she probably genuinely in her head could think of nothing worse than being in there doing OT.

If you hate your job, please please leave.

In saying that, my post is probably the first in which it has been mentioned at all anything negative about nurses so I'm unsure why this thread was your last straw. As pp stated, people are angry at the system, at the government, at the state they've left us in, surely they're just on the same page as you then.

@Imthedamnfoolwhoshothim yes, I have noticed it too. You see it a lot with teachers on here I find. Or the other thread atm discussing GPs.

Anything negative about the profession, or even a particular example given of a particular person, is seen as a personal affront and attack on anyone in that same profession and people have to jump on the defensive straight away.

They could have been seen by their GP/pharmacy/dentist/mental health teams

I think in a lot of cases, pharmacy is the only real viable option out of that list and 9/10 they tell you to see your GP.

They could have been seen by their GP/pharmacy/dentist/mental health teams

What mental health team support? That doesn't exist here.

NHS dentists are super rare too. I don't blame people wanting pain relief immediately

My local hospital A&E is downgraded to a Minor Injuiries Unit overnight and indeed has no doctor after 8pm. They can and do transfer people to the next town if they need it though.

Why are there no doctors available though? Is it lack of funding? Lack of staff in general?

@GrandRapids they're leaving in droves because of working conditions. And like barristers, many of them at the junior end of the scale, are working for what comes out as less than minimum wage.

But seriously what is the answer to all of this? Yes the pandemic has had huge ramifications for the NHS but it's been a struggling system for decades and no tangible changes are ever really made?

Personally I now save a large portion of my salary every month so I can pay privately for certain things that may crop up. But if I had a stroke or heart attack, you HAVE to go to A&E, there are no other options are there?

This is a problem with 111. You cannot prebook an appointment in ED, and they should not be telling patients this. The amount of abuse I used to get when I worked in ED and explained this is ridiculous

I admire your optimism here. I've just come off a stint working in stroke discharge and we have patients who were quoted 7+ hour waits for ambulances when having a stroke; and another who waited 5 hours as they were told to wait and help was on its way and they were the sort of people who do what they're told by the medics.

More staff and resources should be put into triage and then patients directed to an appropriate service. Only certain criteria reached to be admitted to A&E. Many people should be told to: ring their GP in the morning, phone the emergency dental service or phone in the morning to be allocated a dentist, go to urgent care or minor injuries and go and speak to a pharmacist.

You would need security nearby though as when I did triage, I was threatened with all sorts!

Chevyimpala67 I'm very aware of the services around me. Maybe I'm lucky to live in an area with decent services?

Our local pharmacies are excellent at giving good/sound advice.

It's an effort to get a GP appointment for sure. But not impossible. I think SOME patients think it's easier to "nip to A+E" rather than jump through hoops with their GP receptionist.

I've just had several weeks off after a breakdown (I had a young patient have a cardiac arrest and died in our waiting room because the wait for triage is so ridiculously fucking long) I wasn't even on shift but felt so guilty. Im a Band 7 so had to write a statement even though it was on a rare day off. I've also been struggling with the death of my Mum who died because of negligence at the same Trust where I work.
The mental health services at my GP were amazing. I was seen daily for a while.

It's sad that this has turned into an A+E bashing thread. We are on our knees, literally. Staff are leaving in droves.
Lots of staff are off with their mental health, they are knackered and just worn out. The abuse we get daily is so sad.

Anyway, I need to get some more sleep because I'm going back in tonight for another 15 hours because we are short staffed again.

Meant to add that I was having a heart problem and waiting to register with reception. The man in front of me had walked in perfectly normally, no limping, wearing normal shoes. Said he had twisted his ankle. When asked when he did it he stated that it was five days earlier. He was seen by a doctor! Goodness knows why triage allowed it. I saw him leave, no treatment, but he had wasted so much time of medical staff. I saw a patient who had been brought in by ambulance as she couldn't get her denture out. There needs to be a much more vigorous attitude to using these resources.