To think if you can wait for a GP you shouldn't be in A&E

[Alfenstein]

Was in A&E overnight last night and was confused and then a bit annoyed about a situation and wanted to see what others thought

I arrived at A&E for 18:00, was told it was very busy (when is it not) and the waits were 5+ hours. I was triaged and sat in the waiting room

At 02:00 a nurse came in and made an announcement. Saying that waits were still really long because they've got 15 ambulances waiting but there is a GP based at the hospital who will be in from 08:00, if people would prefer to go home and come back they would be seen by the GP.

And half of the waiting room got up and left!

AIBU to think that if you can wait until morning you don't need to be in A&E.

Surely the issue isn't that urgent or an emergency if you can bugger off home and come back in the morning!

Why do you keep calling people silly? You have no idea about their circumstances. You sound like you think you're above everyone else.

So OP this is the first time you have personally used A&E and you have sent them instructions on how to run the whole department more efficiently? 🤣😂

Nope

Not instructions more suggestions

There were areas of clear inefficiency leading to longer than necessary wait times

The fact their check in operator took 17 minutes to log onto his computer was another area of concern where time delays were caused based on something the hospital can fix

Do you not think asking and posting idiotic comments is silly?

Good for you

Not how it works here so not overly relevant but thanks for sharing

I'll sleep better knowing how a hospital I will never have to visit deals with triage

@MoodyMooToo again, who said I was unseen for 8 hours?

I was being seen and in the waiting room in between. Which is how it works in our A&E unless you need surgery

By a GP do you mean a minor injuries type clinic? Or a walk in GP surgery? I suspect most people don't know what's available especially as it's been changing so much recently (our walk in clinic closed to give vaccinations for two years or so). A PP is right - people need to be told about that on arrival.

We have an out of hours clinic and a minor injuries one next to A&E as far as I know, but you need to be referred by NhS direct (or whatever it is now)

Walk in GP service

We have urgent care which is used for minor injuries in the day

From what I hear 17 minutes is not that long at all. Doctor the other day took twice as long to log in. Public sector IT isn't always shit but NHS seem to have a real issue (as you might recall from the hacking incident)

If the waits were very long at A&E, is it not conceivable that some of the people who left at 2am had actually been there since the previous afternoon? And that they had gone there during normal working hours hoping that the hospital GP would have been able to see them? Then having waited several hours didn't want to give up and lose their place in the queue? Did you ask them to fill in a questionnaire?

I think that what is silly, is not acknowledging that everyone has different experiences and not everyone has the facilities to which you are referring. I also think that your arrogance and assumptions are breathtaking and not in a good way.

I hope your situation has resolved.

Apologies, that is the impression you gave as you said you’d been triaged back to the waiting room. This suggests that you were indeed not on your last legs

Keen to know where this walk in GP service is - if it's within an hour it might be quicker to go there next time I need to be seen! (I am being flippant of course, I'll just go to my local a&e instead)

They closed our urgent care 👌👌 and our minor injuries unit 👌👌 and you can't get a GP appointment unless you pay private. Are we all still 'a bit silly', you are incredibly silly to assume provision of services is consistent. I've heard people suggest to parents struggling with kids bedwetting to try the incontinence service, guess what they axed that in my (heavily populated, urban) area too!!! What are people supposed to do if they cannot access healthcare?!

There will be many, many people in A&E who don’t need to be there.

Many of those would have stayed when they were told about the gp.

There will also be many people who should be in A&E and many of them would have gone when told about the gp.

It’s a hard one as we know people use A&E when they don’t need to.

But because of that many people (myself included) feel like they’re wasting A&Es time and if they’ve waited that long then they ‘can’t be that bad’.

There’ll also be single parents paying babysitters etc.

There are so many reasons as to why people may not know about local services, visiting or being new to the area being just one of them. Most people know about A&E as it is a national service present at almost every large hospital so even if you don’t really engage with any local services or groups you would likely know about it and know it’s where to go if you are unwell.

There were likely people sat in the waiting room who didn’t have English as a first language, who have substance or alcohol issues, who have mental health issues, who are elderly and have symptoms of dementia, who have learning disabilities or who are neurodiverse, who are in a cycle of unemployment/ poverty and others with various other things going on in their lives that mean they might not be aware of what services are in the local area or able to accurately assess which service would be best suited to their needs.

It is frustrating when people are not using the service most suited to them, but if that’s happening it is probably not the fault of the service users but the fault of the systems which are not sending people to the correct place or ensuring that communities are aware of the local facilities. Having ‘urgent care’ signs in the town centre isn’t a good enough strategy for ensuring people know what urgent care is or when to use it, especially considering not everybody drives or is going to process the signs. Discussing the local health services on Facebook groups is not going to help the very elderly or people with poor English or literacy skills or people who don’t have internet access know which service to access. Having the school nurse tell parents which service to use when their child is injured isn’t much help for people who don’t have children in school.

You seem to be assuming that everybody has access to the knowledge you have about the services available without considering that just because something seems obvious to you doesn’t mean that is the case for everybody. Most people do not want to sit in A&E for 8+ hours overnight if there is another option, if people turned up to A&E only to immediately leave when told they could see a GP the next day it sounds likely they weren’t aware that service existed until the announcement or they clearly wouldn’t have sat around until the announcement. If it’s the case 70 people all sat in A&E until 2am but left when told about the GP then that suggests it isn’t just a case of a few stupid people making the wrong choice to attend, when it’s that many people all choosing to leave as soon as they found out about the GP it sounds like those people were clearly not aware the service existed beforehand.

I do wonder if it’s worth scraping the gp system all together and just having walk in clinics in the hospitals, which can triage you and then send you to either minor injuries or A&E.

I think it will seriously cut down waiting times at A&E which should be for emergencies but also let you get seen the same day.

A big issue is that people can’t get to their gp, the minor injuries clinics are being removed so their only option is to go to A&E.

Last week I completed an econsult for a medium severity issue - not bad enough to warrant hospital treatment, but something that the gp will have needed to see face to face.

Got a callback to say there were no appointments available that day so to go to A&E instead! When I objected I was told there were no gp's available to see me and in order to get treatment it's A&E or nothing.

Obviously I didn't go to A&E. I went into the surgery directly and told them I'd sit and wait for an appointment for as long as is required. I was polite but firm and lo and behold, they were able to squeeze me in.

However I wonder how many people have been advised to use A&E as a walk in surgery!

Our GP stopped the Econsults. Apparently too many people were using it.
Again, you are being very silly to assume consistent service /offer throughout the country!!

You and they had been triaged therefore they knew it was safe to wait. How else were they to see a doctor or a nurse?
Patient content to go, danger eliminated, Job Done

If you were being treated efficiently and there wasn’t a delay or a wait for you then what business is it of yours whether other people decided to wait or not? What impact did it have on you whatsoever?

how about wind your neck in OP, worry about yourself and your own health (which you were being tested and treated for) and leave other people to their own business? They wanna wait 12 hours in A&E, fine. If they don’t, also fine. What does it have to do with you?

I didn't know this. I have issues getting an appointment with my GP and I work, so can't just drop everything to spend hours on the phone trying to get through.

I think (once again) people are blaming the wrong people here. You have to ask why people are turning up at A&E for things that can be dealt with by a GP. No wonder this country is a mess we blame each other instead of holding our government to account for letting things deteriorate. They don't know they're doing shit unless we stop blaming each other and tell them.

@CallOnMe but that's not what takes up the majority of GP time. It's ongoing issues with complicated co-morbities for lots of older patients, or early referral for issues like diabetes, thyroid problems and cancer. Not injuries and acute illnesses. Scrapping them is a terrible idea, they should be the cornerstone of the NHS - we need to fix them instead. I do agree that we need more mental health capacity including first aid and that might help.

I feel like half of MN are going to turn up to their local hospital now expecting walk in GPs, and are going to be very disappointed 🙄

Well, hope you feel better now anyway OP.