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?

By the way, 40% of all government spending stat is for NHS and social care. So carers for disabled people and elderly people, residential homes, etc for people without money to pay for it themselves.

@FrenchFancie

52 hours!!! That's fucking abysmal 😕

The Conservatives destroyed the out-of-hours GP service.

I see you're ignoring Blairs brilliant new GP contract which was designed to "cure" the GP problems that were evidence back as far as the early 00's. Well that worked well didn't it? The whole idea of paying them more and letting them opt out of anti-social hours work was to encourage more GPs and reduce the numbers leaving. Worked well didn't it!

It's absolutely diabolical it used to be maximum 4 hour wait at our local hospital. Since the open access has stopped it's a minimum of 8 hour's.

With covid restrictions I couldn't even order food to collect from reception. I had to literally beg staff to allow family to drop some food off for us.

A friend of mine was suicidal she was taken by ambulance and waited 13 hour's with her husband.

Or you improve efficiency and reduce waste, so you don't need to keep increasing the funding, a proportion of which is lost to waste, fraud and inefficiency.

Her GP sent her there GP's don't have the facilities to investigate further than doing a urine sample. Hospital have the equipment to do investigative scan's and blood test's.

I know a mother that was accused of wasting doctors time. She repeatedly took him to the GP and hospital. They just fobbed her off with antibiotics and iron tablets.

One morning he collapsed she got a taxi to a children's hospital 2 hours away. By the next day she was told he had cancer. The day after they diagnosed the type of cancer he had a started on the treatment pathway.

@Badbadbunny Might help if you did not share inaccurate stats? I have already pointed out what is inaccurate.

A&E needs a massive upgrade as people are using it as a GP service. Why can't they have a system where people with suspected surgical needs, can't return home if they are able and return for treatment if needed, or their GP be informed of results.

Did the GP test OPs urine I wonder?

I do find it a toss up between whether to stay or go. If you don’t go you can get into bed but you will probably decline, if you do go there’s a good chance you’ll be waiting a long time feeling awful 😢

I’m sorry for everyone who is needing emergency care at this time. It’s a miserable experience even when the service is running well. I cannot begin to imagine how stressful it must be for staff.

Also why is the provision of minor injury units so patchy. We do not have one with our local a and e, nearest next a and e 1 hour away so it is hardly nearby. So, gp's not doing minor wounds etc, no minor wounds dept so a and e the only option.

When I went into the nursing profession aged 17, things were VASTLY different. That was 1963.
It's really depressing nowadays.
A friend went through BUPA to have a mole removed from her leg.
She was meant to be in overnight.
At 10pm after the op, I received a call asking me to pick her up from the hospital in Chertsey. There were dishes with dried food on under the bed from a previous patient and a dirty dressing on the toilet cistern in the en-suite bathroom.
Friend was terribly upset at the lack of standards, especially as she thought the care and hygiene would be exemplary in a private facility. She had previously given me a letter of authorisations to take to Halifax bank so I could withdraw 2200 which had to be paid before the op was performed. This was 1997.

If you leave with things left open it'll invalidate your travel insurance, so if you are planning a foreign holiday, stay put. I'd personally feel like leaving too but in case things need following up best stay. Even a kidney infection can result in serious damage if not treated

A friend had a routine operation privately due to waiting lists on NHS. When she came around she asked for water - she still couldn't get out of bed - someone rushed in and left water too far away for her to reach. No one came near her again for hours in spite of her calling. She had a private room.

Private is not always best. Just because we throw money at the situation, doesn’t make it better.

@Wombat100 A GP visit earlier and suspected appendicitis doesn't warrant a trip to hospital? Where do you get your appendicitis treated usually, Asda??

@Rosessmelllike wow, judgmental much? She was sent by her GP with suspected appendicitis! Presumably if that happened to you, You would obviously know better and not follow medical advice and go home. What a ridiculous comment.

My mum is 90 - she was in A&E for 23hrs with uncontrolled bleeding last week. They stopped the bleeding after she’d waited 4hrs for an ambulance by which time she was clammy and confused and losing vision. They didn’t know where the bleed had come from. 23hours, on a plastic seat, at 90yrs old. Large central London hospital.
The NHS is not fit for purpose and we need to stop being romantic about it and find a new way. It’s a disgrace.

Wow, I have started a debate! 😬

I am feeling much better on the antibiotics, thanks for those of you who asked 💐.

The staff did a fantastic job trying to do their best in a very busy service. They were helpful, kind and as quick as they could be (I did approach the staff nurse in tears at 1am, wondering if I should go home and she got a surgeon to review the scan report within an hour). All the beds were full and there were elderly people on trolleys, very sad 🥺.

I am currently a healthcare student. Not nursing but can't wait to qualify, join the NHS and help out.

Stay well everyone x

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

And there’s more to be done as well. More imaging, more active intervention for acute presentations like strokes, all of which takes time. The staff in ED are working hard, there’s just too much to do and too many patients.

Absolutely. Whilst waiting when I first arrived at the hospital (expecting to go to the surgical ward!) I browsed through the ward descriptions and found nearly all of them were for care of the elderly 😔. It's a perfect storm of lack of staff, growing health and social care needs. Would love to know what the answer is! More money I presume 🤔

Australian hospitals are busy at the moment with new covid surges and a current flu A epidemic. There are news reports about how dire it is, with something on the radio saying 1 in 3 people are waiting longer than 4 hours, when things are at their peak.

However it’s Sunday morning here, there are some large metropolitan EDs that list their waiting times and most are 1-2 hours, with some having none at all.

Wait times are often difficult to interpret because of the people that do turn up with sore throats and the like.

I know everyone is always very defensive about hybrid private systems but there are a few aspects of the NHS that seem very inefficient.

In Australia, most hospitals are public, they are free and anyone can turn up and be treated for free. GPs are not part of the same system and locally, where I live, there are 3 main private pathology providers and 4 main radiology providers.

So to get a scan, bloods, any tests a GP thinks is necessary doesn’t need to be organised through the hospital. Investigations can be done on the same day and results available electronically. X-rays are reported and back usually within 24 hours. I’m not a GP but I can request radiology in the morning and it’s back, and reported, by the end of the day. There are private lung function tests, again some bUlk bill.

The best part (!) is that the public hospitals can log in and visualise the private results of their patients.

It seems nuts to me that people are seeing their GPs, clearly needing simple tests done and then sometimes having to be referred to the crazy busy NHS hospital to get them done.

And yes, GPs are private, but you can choose one who is “bulk billed”, ie doesn’t charge above the government rates so you don’t need to pay. Lab tests are usually BB, most X-ray places are and further imaging is if you know the system (ie for a while if a specialist wanted an MRI brain privately it was free if requested through the GP).

Last year my daughter was tired and seemed to be having recurrent infections, she had a private blood test the day I decided it was necessary - that the government paid for - which was reassuring with just some iron and Vit D deletion that we supplemented. Reasonable causes for the mild drop in ferritin were excluded. I can’t fathom having to wait for that to be done at the hospital (because she’s a child) and have the “what if it’s serious” niggle away at me.

These threads on MN are similar in that people agree that what’s happening to the NHS is shocking but most are very protective/defensive of it.

Yeah. I mean you don't actually know if you're fine or not if you haven't been examined by a doctor. That's part of the process when you have worrying symptoms, usually everything is fine but unless a doctor has checked you how would you know unless you collapse or just die. Surely we aren't at the stage where you have to die to prove the point that you don't bother A&E

' I browsed through the ward descriptions and found nearly all of them were for care of the elderly 😔. It's a perfect storm of lack of staff, growing health and social care needs. Would love to know what the answer is! More money I presume 🤔'

More nursing and residential home places, better pay for caring staff so that family members are reassured that the people caring for their family are qualified and have actually chosen this job as their profession because they want to look after people and help them. More funding for home carer packages, more funding for the social workers who put the packages together. A government elder care department with a minister who is responsible for ensuring older people are looked after. Increasing the threshold for pension credits so that older people can put the heating on or buy new slippers instead of slipping and falling and breaking hips all over the place in old ones. We could build some one and two bedroom bungalows all over the country. We could increase the rate of carers allowance.

Yes it all costs money. But having hospitals rammed full of old people sitting in beds they don't need to be in costs money too.

Ok, So what do you have an infection of. Kidneys, Urine, Abdomen?
Just really curious.

Most people need healthcare when they are very young - being born, checked out as a baby and toddler and treated, and when they are older. Apart from pregnancy, most people in the middle do not use healthcare much.