To walk out of A&E

[Usernamqwerty]

I've been here since 18:00 with what started as suspected appendicitis (from a GP visit this afternoon). Surgeon examined me and said looks like a kidney infection. I had a CT scan nearly 4 hours ago and still waiting on a chair in the busy stuffy waiting area.

There are trolleys lining the corridors here. It's so busy. I asked the nurse when I might hear and she said the doctor will get to me when they can. I might be here all night, I have no idea!

I am shattered, hot and bored and I just want to go home 😭. What happens if I leave? Can I ask them to send my GP the scan report and antibiotics request?

I'm so glad you waited, hopefully you'll start to feel better when the antibiotics start working

Sorry it has been a long wait. But I do not think it is too bad. You were seen by a Dr and had a scan within two hours. This revealed it was not appendicitis so not urgent. So you were put at the bottom of the queue to be seen again.

@Usernamqwerty hope you don't have to wait long for ABs, and that you get home to bed soon.

Only in this country would 8 hours in A&E be described as 'not too bad'

Our standards are depressingly low!

Also in A&E with what was suspected appendicitis - now being told it’s diverticulitis and I need to be admitted for 2-3 days IV antibiotics and monitoring.

Only in this country would 8 hours in A&E be described as 'not too bad'

Our standards are depressingly low!

So true. It’s abysmal. No wonder why people leave and discharge themselves. OP, I’m glad you stuck it out and hope you feel better soon💐

I did! Had waited 7 hours lying on the floor (inner ear infection so couldn't sit up without vomiting and got told by a nurse that she "didn't have anywhere for me to lie down") and gave up, despite being dangerously dehydrated. Nurses in A and E literally couldn't have given less of a shit and as for seeing a doctor - forget it! Kept asking me "what solution I suggested" - er, you work there! How about you suggesting a solution???

Haven't needed the NHS in years and so angry at the way I was treated, but they'll continue to get hundreds in NI from me every month despite no treatment being available. Complaint is in with PALS but doubt they'll do anything, just seems to be acceptable now.

Really hope you get sorted quickly, it's hideous and that you're feeling better soon.

I'm glad you got seen in the end OP and got your antibiotics. Hopefully they well kick in soon.

Trying to get a hospital and GP to talk to each other after you've left is one of the hardest things. I've told this story before and someone told me it was the hospitals fault, they were attempting something called 'secondary care dumping' but from the patients perspective it's a Kafka novel. A couple of years ago I had an acute illness, was in hospital about 48hrs, then the consultant checked my blood tests and said 'Well....I'll let you go home now, but you need to get x blood test within two weeks to ensure this continues to resolve. Talk to your GP'.

My GP (after 10 million contact attempts): That's the hospital's responsibility
The hospital (after 10 million contact attempts): Who are you?
Me: Explains
The hospital: Ask your GP
The GP: I don't even know what test they want. You need a form.
The hospital: Come back and we'll give you a form.
Me: (Goes to the hospital)
The hospital: Who are you?

continues infinitum

I consider giving up on the assumption that if there were anything seriously wrong I'd be dead by now.

Eventually get the form.

GP: We can't do this, go to x (differnet) hospital outpatient clinic
X Clinic: Ask your GP

[Eventually get test at clinic]

GP: I can't tell you the results of this because of data protection.
Me: It's....it's my results.
GP: Yes but I didn't request it.
Me: Can you see the results?
GP: Yes.
Me: Please tell me the results.
GP: Well I shouldn't but.....they're fine.

A relative of mine waited in a& e from 11pm with what they thought was a heart attack. The dr arrived at 7am and she found out there had been no dr there all night. She could have waited at home

@iloveeverykindofcat That's absurd but I can believe it. Like 2 entities on different planets. Too much work. Too little staff...

Haven’t needed the NHS in years …. Continue to get hundreds in NI from me every month

that being the way insurance works. If you had been taken to A and E by air ambulance after a serious car crash , had needed extensive surgery and rehab then you would have got the value of your NI contributions back instantly. I personally would rather just know it was there like my house and car insurance.

We have a chronically underfunded service because a) it is a hugely expensive and inefficiently run dinosaur and b) none of us are actually paying enough to fund it properly. The whole thing needs a rethink, when the NHS started the medical procedures on offer were remarkably basic, if you had a cancer diagnosis you had surgery then you died. If you had a heart attack you died. If you got older than 70 you died, if you were born with certain conditions you died. We now have an ageing population with often increasingly complicated health needs , we also have much higher expectations of what can be offered medically and surgically for previously terminal or life limiting conditions, we expect very expensive interventions to be offered routinely either through drug therapy, medical or surgical intervention. All of this is right and proper and no one wants to go back to Nightingale wards of patients obediently lying in their beautifully made beds waiting for visiting hour.

But we then waste appointments by not bothering to turn up, we demand and then not use our heavily subsidised medications, we abuse and overwork expensively trained staff so they don’t stay in the job, we phone for ambulances for minor ailments , and essentially piss a lot of the resources we have paid for up the wall. We don’t take care of our basic health so that largely preventable diseases like diabetes are not draining resources from other areas of the service.

And painful truth, we don’t pay enough, we don’t pay enough to fund the NHS primary care and to fund additional care for those who need it through disability or age. We either all need to pay more directly through taxation ( and hope the system is made more efficient so as not to waste our payments) or we need to look at how we can source additional funding by following those countries who expect their citizens to top up a basic service by additional private insurance.

The absolute shite that if you can walk out you are fine and shouldn’t be there shows exactly how the nhs is not fit for purpose

Similar happened to me - I was referred from emergency GP with suspected peritonitis which turned out to be diverticulitis. It took from arrival at 2pm until midnight to when I got on the ward but I was in so much pain I couldn’t have cared less!

The antibiotics work really quickly so hopefully you’ll be on the mend soon, diverticulitis is horrid though, I feel for you.

If you self discharge you are removing yourself from the system (and removing their liability).

Its very rare any further investigations would be looked at unless a lab flagged them and beeped a doctor to raise it OR there was a capacity issue.

You cannot self discharge and expect them to keep investigation in A and E FFS. its a huge indemnity issue.

also if you self discharge they don’t write the discharge letter to your GP in most cases.

glad your sorted OP and hope you feel better

^^spot on.
Glad you stayed and got your results.

Your decision.

Perhaps we ALL need to campaign our local MP's about this. A&E cannot cope. People turn up for things that doctors should see (not you OP) and increase the wait times. People call ambulances when they don't need to and increase wait times.

The beds where they treat A&E admissions are often full with people just waiting for a bed on a ward for MAE and so new people cannot be seen.

The whole system in in crisis and the care system is worse but hey ho we have a government that spends more time partying and lying and giving contracts to their mates, dodging taxes (legally Non Dom Billionaire wife of potential new MP) than actually really doing what they should which is SORT THE MESS OUT. After all they have had 12 years messing it up. But hey ho vote for more of the same and we will get worse and worse services.

We get what we deserve when we vote blue

Glad you stayed and got your results and diagnosis. I had a similar experience and was there for 12 hours from start to finish. Overnight with no bed, sleep, water , company etc. it was an endurance test to say the least and when you are feeling unwell and in pain it is horrendous. and inhumane.
still. You we’re in the right place . You got treated . And I hope you start to feel much better soon

I’m glad you stayed. My dad was taken to hospital from an intermediate care centre (he’d recently been discharged from hospital where he’d had sepsis and a heart attack. The first hospital they went to turned the ambulance away as it had too many waiting. We got to the second hospital at 7pm and he was on a trolley in the corridor until 3am (with a load more very sick people). I left at 4am and the waiting room was packed. The announcements were saying seven hours wait time. Despite my dad still looking very poorly they’ve discharged him 12 hours later (they’re just desperate for beds). I’m absolutely terrified by how on its knees the nhs is.

The problem is the amount of stuff the NHS has to deal with now.

In the old days, surgical emergencies like appendicitis, renal stones, gallstones would've been assessed and treated easily. Along with heart attacks. Now you've got hundreds of 80+ "off legs"/"generally unwell"/"social admissions", plus middle aged people with metabolic syndrome/diabetes, plus increasingly anxious younger people who present convinced they've got an urgent condition because they read about it online but actually it's trapped wind or gastroenteritis.

The system wasn't designed for complex care of lifestyle diseases, to hold off the inevitable conditions of old age or to deal with societal mental illness.

A few weeks ago my 94 year old grandmother was 52 hours in a&e (yes you read that right) with A possible infection having been brought in by ambulance because they thought she had sepsis. She was on a trolley all that time but was neither admitted nor discharged. It’s fucking shocking the state of the NHS now - no dig and the staff, but dear god it needs sorting out.

Absolutely it's bloody dire.
Glad you got there in the end op.

It really does. A lot of my family work for the NHS and are deeply defensive about it but the current system is not fit for purpose it's not working. We wouldn't treat animals the way some people are being treated its beyond belief.

This isn’t exactly true. As mammals we do have an instinct to go to our nest when critically wounded. A&E is a very hard and tiring place to be, so a severely ill or injured person can actually “feel” they should go home when they should not. It happened to a friend of mine after a car accident. After waiting four hours in A&E with neck pain/suspected whiplash she was so exhausted that she went home. What she didn’t know is she had a broken neck and concussion- so went to bed and literally did not wake up/died in her sleep.

I sympathise, my dad was in A&E for nearly two days a couple of weeks ago. The care there was great though. When he was finally put on a ward they just left him to rot for ten days and discharged him to intermediate care (back in an ambulance 48 hours later). It absolutely terrifies me. I don’t see how the NHS can survive much longer.

The sad truth is she would've been in a huge queue behind loads of patients with the exact same presentation.

And the beds ahead are blocked by the same elderly people who've been treated but can't return home because their family can't help care for them, their home is unsafe and nobody has made a plan for this situation despite them being 80+ years old.

Our hospital has over 150 medically fit elderly patients who are waiting for care packages.