12 hours waiting for emergency hospital admission

[shad0wm00n]

I am utterly desperate and don’t know what I can do!

My Father has been poorly lately, losing weight and feeling generally unwell. He had a doctors appointment today and the doctors said his liver is failing and they suspect stomach cancer. She said he needs to be admitted to hospital for tests and fluids etc immediately.

The surgery called an ambulance and was advised there was a 4 hour wait! So told us to drive him there instead and they printed off an admissions letter and off we rushed.

That was 12 hours ago and my parents have been sat at the hospital ever since, as apparently there are no beds ok wards.

Dad has had an X-ray and bloods and he’s waiting for a CT scan and a few more tests but they’ve confirmed he has cancer and 2 additional and serious issues, all of which will require admission.

Dad is not on a drip and has had no food for 3 days, he H’s just been left in a waiting room.

He’s been told he will have to spend the next 24 hours sitting in A&E waiting for a trolley (he can’t even lie down at the moment and his legs are very swollen) and if he’s lucky, after that he may get a bed within 48 hours.

I can’t believe my dearly loved father is being treated like this and I don’t know how I can help. If he is still alive by the time he gets a bed it will be a miracle!

AIBU to say the NHS has already collapsed and that more people need to know just how bad it is.

if anyone knows anything I can do. Please let me know. Is this a PALs issue? Surely they’re failing in their duty of care?

I desperately want us as a society to have a hard-headed, unemotional debate about the future of healthcare in this country

The first thing we can do is discuss care of the elderly and whether they can avoid paying for care by relying on the NHS every time they have a fall etc.

What is needed is improved social care and a reversal of the Evusheld decision

When people cannot be safely discharged, there are no beds available for admissions

There are still many beds (and a lot of ICU) with COVID patients which does not help, as you can’t safely put cancer services alongside potentially positive people (the governments decision not to fund Evusheld makes even less sense when you start looking at it in these terms, as it’s the immune suppressed who make up the vast majority of those admitted)

This sort of story is typical where I live. Our local Tory MPs don't give a stuff. Your poor dad.

This happened to me repeatedly in 2006 (under Labour, whose policies created the madness of MAU/CDU units where pesky rules like single sex wards/toilets and limited waits don't apply) and even then, we were playing the game of "will the NHS collapse this Winter?" The care is dire and always will be. The main difference under Labour is newer BMW's in the consultants' car park.

We don't have enough doctors to make a decent continental style mutuelle system work at the moment, but the first party to start working towards this - with multiple providers and money following the patient so that hospitals and GP's actually want to see you (rather than wanting you to FO somewhere else because budget) - will get my vote for life. It is literally the most important issue facing the country and it will impact absolutely all of us.

@DiscoBadgers
You are misinformed.

No-one can dispute that we have an aging population that increases demand on both the NHS and Social Services.
The NHS is a victim of it's own success in that people are living longer but aren't necessarily more healthy.
We have an obesity crisis that is not the fault of the Tories.
We have people suffering from diseases caused by excess drinking and smoking, are we supposed to blame the Tories for that?!

Between 2009/10 and 2014/15, English NHS funding rose by £14.9 billion, from £98.4 billion to £113.3 billion there was also an additional £0.25 billion injected in 2014/15.

(The was a Labour government until 11th May 2010)

Planned spending for the Department of Health and Social Care in England is £190.3 billion in 2021/22. The majority of the Department's spending (£136.1 billion in 2021/22) is passed to NHS England and NHS Improvement for spending on health services

During the Covid Pandemic the Department of Health & Social Care made new contractural arrangements with the Independent Hospital Sector to raise capacity. This cost £12.2 billion in 20/21.

The Tories cannot be blamed for the Covid Crisis. Covid 19 lead to a backlog of unmet need leading to 6 million waiting for routine treatment.

However Labour can be blamed for mass immigration under Tony Blair (who BTW wanted to sell off the NHS)

Recent figures from the ONS (office of National Statistics)show that there were nearly seven million new registrations with GP surgeries by migrant patients in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in the past decade (2010-20). This points to the huge additional strain that rapid immigration can have on the NHS, and on GP surgeries – something that is often (and increasingly) ignored by some people.

This week saw major announcements on health and social care funding. Outside of the usual Budget or Spending Review process, the government announced around £12 billion of additional spending for the Department of Health and Social Care for each year between 2022−23 and 2024−25, alongside a corresponding tax rise.

I miscarried on a plastic chair on a ward for 12 hours. I was so upset. I was also alone. Going down for my op was such a relief and then being allowed to sleep in a bed after.
The anaesthetist was so apologetic, saying I shouldn't be going from a chair to theatre but that there were just no beds, no staff, nothing 😞

I definitely ageee that a large part of the problem is how unhealthy/old/obese our population is, but mumsnet is allergic to ‘personal responsibility’.

@Thesefeetaremadeforwalking How interesting that you think so, considering it’s my actual job.

To address your points in turn:
mad to an ageing population, immigrants etc - the point of the NHS is that it is free to ALL at the point of use. It is the responsibility of the chancellor to take into account population demographics whilst setting the budget, therefore this absolutely is a government oversight.

As to misinformation, you seem sadly misinformed with regards to how far money actually stretches within the NHS. One medium sized hospital building will cost about half a billion pounds to build, not including entirely fitting it out. A delivery bed for labour costs about £10k. You need 12 - 15 for one labour ward. The figures you are referring to wouldn’t pay for sandwiches when stretched across all hospital settings in the UK, let alone gp practices, UTCs, walk in centres etc.

As to the COVID crisis, yes - I absolutely can hold the tories responsible. I sat holding the had of dying patients in the first wave, who died alone without their families, wearing “PPE” made out of bin bags whilst we waited for Matt Hancock to award contracts to his pub owning mates. Members of the public were making scrubs and 3D printing visors because Boris and his cronies were too busy having cheese and wine to arrange any.

Until you have seen what I have seen, how dare you tell me that my direct frontline experience of the Tory NHS budget is misinformed.

You say others on this thread should be ashamed for hijacking the thread? The only person on here who should be ashamed is you and people of your ilk, trying to justify what has been done to our health service, to its staff, and to those who need is and can’t get care.

Let’s not forget the money wasted in management jobs in the NHS like corporate services, were those staff are paid more than double the salary of a nurse. Someone I know who has just got one of those jobs actually has the gall to put NHS worker in her Social media bio like she’s some kind of hero! In my opinion these kinds of jobs are sucking money out of our health service.

a large part of the problem is how unhealthy/old/obese our population is

Even healthy people (indeed, especially healthy people) get old. That seems an odd thing to blame people for.

Also experience here of a parent spending 36 hours in A&E with a hip fracture, no companion allowed in, and no access to food or a toilet. I am surprised they survived the experience.

I’m not blaming people for getting old, of course not. But the elderly using the NHS in lieu of proper care needs to be addressed, no matter how uncomfortable.

@shad0wm00n Thank goodness your Dad is now getting care. Good luck.
@DiscoBadgers I think I love you 
@Thesefeetaremadeforwalking Shut up you absolute wally

Spending should be looked at by health board and the highest area of spends. For example in my area we have the highest number of elderly people In Scotland and not enough young people to balance it out. On the ward in my local hospital it is 100% over 70s and 80s with broken hips or NOFs. Some are fit enough and independent enough to go home after 10 days or so but a vast majority are stuck for months and months with no where to go. The answer? Increase social care funding, wages and take it all back to council ran care companies instead of private that might incentivise people to go into care work, although as stated there aren’t enough young people here to continue care work so I honestly do not know what is going to happen

Call PALS.

@thebutcherswife totally agree there's too many 'pen pushing fuckers' as my hilarious colleague once said ! She's so right, where I work (nhs) there are so many various managers on vast salaries where the money could and should be better spent elsewhere.

I'm so sorry OP, your father deserves better care. I'm not in the UK but yesterday was reminded of a thread here a while back where someone's elderly father was left lying on the bathroom floor for hours and hours. Yesterday we realised that no one had seen our elderly neighbour for 2 days, he wasn't answering his door or calling out when we yelled through the letter box. Within 10mins of calling for help we had the police, 2 units of the firebrigade and an ambulance here. Unfortunately it wasn't a happy outcome but I couldn't help but be grateful that we have such quick, helpful and respectful response here.

I'm not in the UK either and I keep hearing that our health system is on its knees - but I have never heard of anything as bad as some of the stories on MN, and anyone I've known who've had to go to hospital recently have received timely care. Your experience OP, and those of others on this thread, is disgraceful.

I'm so sorry your poor Dad has suffered like this.

To watch a loved one in this scenario, whilst feeling powerless to help them, must be incredibly distressing for you. Go gently.

Upsetting, too, for NHS staff witnessing similar situations repeatedly, despite their personal best efforts and dedication.

Glad he eventually got treatment. Best wishes to you both.

I hope your poor Dad gets onto a ward soon. It's so shit when people have to wait so long to be admitted. I'd be writing to your MP, and do make that complaint to PALS (hopefully that would get escalated up to government). I can promise you that it's not the staff dragging their heels about "finding a bed". It would be that there are no beds. Example: I work on an acute resp ward, with some of the sickest patients outside of ITU. Often the patients on my ward are not purely resp patients. Often we have outliers (completely inappropriate for our ward, and for them, but put there to try and avoid breaches). No vacant beds on their correct wards. We also have people who are fit for discharge but there's no social care provision for them, and/or no placements available for them. Some can be on my ward for weeks waiting. It's crazy. In the meantime, A+E is full, with nowhere for those patients to go. We get phone calls all the time from senior management to try and get patients discharged...but if they're not medically/therapy fit....and if there are no packages of care or placements available, we can't just chuck them out. It's horrible.

As for staffing, my ward is often 50% short of the staffing we should have. We don't like it at all, and escalate these concerns every shift (because I promise you that we do actually care for the patients we look after).

How is your Dad now? Please don't be afraid to ask about what the doctor's plan for him is. Bear in mind that this will probably be tweaked or changed as they get more results through and have seen how initial things have helped etc. If you don't understand things, again just ask for explanations. I am always happy to explain things to patients and their named NOK. It's a scary time for all and I'd not want any patient or NOK to be stressing any more than necessary. Maybe have a list of questions written down and ready.

Another heads up....if you get a contact number for the ward or dept, and the phone is ringing for ages, bear with it and just keep trying. Often there isn't a dedicated person sitting there manning the phone (wish there was! We don't have a ward clerk there all the time), and clinical staff will be in with patients. I have to prioritise my patient care first. I ALWAYS explain this to NOKs. Are you able to nominate one family member to phone in? I often get multiple family members phoning in about one patient. I can only speak to the named NOK (and only with the patient's verbal consent if they have capacity), and I definitely don't have the time to take multiple phone calls from different family members about the same patient. Is your Dad able to use a mobile phone? If he is, pack one and a charger (make sure it's labelled!). I have bought chargers and charge leads for my ward (for patients who may have forgotten a charger), and we're always happy to put a phone on to charge. During the height of covid, when no visitors were allowed on the ward, I ended up allowing patients to use my phone (we didn't have any cordless ones that worked) so they could contact their loved ones. But that's strictly speaking not allowed (I just couldn't let people who had no means of contacting family die without saying goodbye, so I took the rap for it, and deleted contact numbers after each call).

Wishing you guys all the best xx

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but wouldn’t it make more sense for those not acutely unwell and waiting for social care to be the ones waiting in chairs (eg. In some sort of waiting for discharge lounge, with stepped down appropriate lower levels of staff attention) and the acutely ill to be in the beds?

Lovely message tictac

Did you make a complaint?

Yep. They said I was advised correctly. The A&E waiting room is a place for people to sit and wait for treatment. If you’re unable to sit and wait because of the severity of your injuries then you should not go to A&E. You should stay at home and call an ambulance.

I was unable to sit because of a spinal injury, so they said the appropriate course of action was for me to lie down at home, call an ambulance and lie down in the ambulance, then continue to lie in the ambulance parked outside the hospital until a bed was available. This is why there are no ambulances, because they’re all parked outside the hospital with people lying in them!

So are we supposed to "take responsibility" for being old?

As I am the OP, let me say I AM VERY HAPPY FOR EVERYONE TO BLAME THE TORIES AS MUCH AS THEY LIKE.

I’d rather the Tory apologists toddle off and persuaded themselves all is fine.