To say that the NHS a and e team are fucking heroes

[Ragingoverlife]

They all are. But I've particularly noticed how well they cope under pressure tonight. They are so short staffed and receiving so much shit in children's A and E. I feel so bad for them x

Nurses and sisters apologising because their doctors have been borrowed back by another department and not returning for hours..

I've been here since 9pm. 1st hospital turned me away, as I had a child and they had no docs. 1.5 hours to triage into children Been waiting for doc since. (Which is fine) they are mentally busy, and my child has reduced in temp etc. Im happy waiting But wow there is so many upset parents. Waiting hours I can see why they are so frustrated. There is also lots of Strep A panic also I think we've got another 3 hours to go yet, thankfully we have a bed and a chair. Others aren't so lucky. Thank you NHS.

My sister works for the NHS and does bank shifts to cover A and E
According to her if you weeded out the people who are there due to self inflicted circumstances due to avoidable shit choices the service would be unrecognisable from what it is now

it infuriates her when people think it just needs more money and all would be good
or it all down to a political party

the service will always struggle unless there a big shift in the level of responsibility a chunk of the general public take for themselves and there health

Hope your LO is feeling better @Ragingoverlife and you’ve been seen / on the way home x

Agreed, virtual wards are becoming a bigger thing and many more staff are moving to these roles. More specific conditions - frailty, respiratory and oncology, but with an aim of improving community care and reducing hospital admissions 🙏🏼. Unfortunately emergency departments are always going to be packed when people attend for the wrong thing! We can thank the tories for sending the nhs down the pan but obviously covid hasn’t helped either with increased waiting times.
The staff aren’t always angels or the most caring and compassionate people, and of course they’re all just human, but how many other jobs are you expected to do so much with minimal resources, increasing expectations, while receiving abuse from unhappy customers. All while trying to stop people from dying!

Unfortunately how the NHS is being handled makes that unlikely. Our 7 hour wait was filled with the elderly,sick babies, a few breaks, a cancer patient struggling with infection, mentally ill teens, addicts, prisoners… It’s incredibly hard to get a GP appointment and services are shit. CAMHS is on it’s knees, care for the elderly is shit, support for anything hugely lacking…. I’ve had to take my Dd twice in the last 6 months due to there being no inpatient beds anywhere for her condition….

Where do you draw that line though? A lot of illnesses, injuries and accidents are self inflicted really. My partner had to go with a nail in his foot. Flip flops in the garden, he should have been more careful. Would you sister say he should have been weeded out for his shit choice of footwear? My friend broke a bone playing football, self inflicted? He should have stayed home on the sofa. Oh no then he might have got unfit, fat and had to go with chest pains and shortness of breath at some point. Self inflicted again. 😅 Your sister sounds silly, so I’ll give as stupid an answer to that back.

It does get worse under Tories. It would benefit from more funding. It’s also badly managed. Bullying and racism are common and not dealt with. My friend left nursing due to the racism she faced that wasn’t dealt with, their loss.

Lets not blame the patients.

@rwalker

I'm sure that is a large part
If it.

Access
To a GP would be
A
Start

It depends on your experience tough doesn’t it? You had a bed and waited a few hours while your child received treatment. Hardly much to write home about and part of the experience.

I was recently in with my young toddler who had breathing difficulties, she was receiving treatment from the drs on and off while we were sent back to the waiting room. We were in the waiting room for 6pm to 3am. At that point they said it would be at least 6/7am for us as she needed different treatment and further observation. I had already asked was there nowhere else we would wait and they said sorry no room, I just cried. I had been up for nights with an ill child who couldn’t sleep and had been walking around so she could sleep on me in the hospital from the evening until 3am.
Then they noticed her sats were even lower than before we arrived and another dr glanced over at us and said they need a bed. At about 4am we got moved to a treatment bed while waiting for admission which meant the lights never went off and had to wait until 10am for a bed on the ward.

Baby was admitted for 3 days, to top it off I was sent back by the GP days later and waited for midday to 8:30pm as she thought an infection, possibly pneumonia being missed. While in hospital one consultant thought she heard infection but was hesitant to give her antibiotics and late when it was suspected pneumonia they wouldn’t xray despite the gp requesting.
A nurse turned her arm blue by using an adult blood pressure setting until baby was screaming, did the same again, then called someone else.
They didn’t hear infection so eventually sent home with the same treatment from her original discharge.

Baby went from bad to worse over the coming week and finally another dr prescribed antibiotics for the chest infection she has likely harboured for weeks!

Im not blaming individual drs or nurses, I’m sure they are mostly working their best within the confines of the system but I had a terrible experience.

I am in a&e at the moment with a 6yo who has had a bleed post tonsillectomy. I’ve been here almost 3 hours, was triaged quickly (it’s generally an emergency), and we are sat in the inner waiting room while his nose slowly oozes. His latest obs are almost 2 hours late and nobody has been near us.

there is a steady flow of patients in and out, a rumoured wait time of 8 hours, and many many tiny babies with breathing problems. Several parents have arrived and left without seeing anyone.

There is one empty cubicle ready to go and two further empty ones that need a deep clean. There are two doctors on tonight and both are run ragged. There just aren’t enough people to deal with the demand.

child needs to be here as a) there has been blood so there may be more, b) he may well have an infection, c) his pain is not well controlled by meds

This

you can’t dismiss that fact better choices would avoid vists
so where do you stand on the next 4 weekends will be full of people pissed or off there heads ether fighting or injured due to being incapacitated

why wouldn’t you blame them for ending up in A and E

@luxxlisbon this is exactly what I’m talking about - if the GP had treated earlier you would have not had such a shitty week, nor would your child, and a&e resources would have been saved.

It’s just awful in there at the moment isn’t it. I’ve been to childrens A&E this week with my dc. He is on active treatment for cancer and had a temperature so had to go in. I’ve never seen it so busy, there was literally no where to sit, people were standing up. We got called in as soon as we arrived thankfully, but as we were walking over to the triage room a man with a coughing child pushed in front of us and started shouting at the nurse. His child was coughing very close to my very immunocompromised child, which I’ve been worrying about since. The nurse gave me the impression that this happens all the time (the shouting). I do feel really sorry for the staff, the conditions are so difficult at the moment. There don’t seem to be any beds available in the hospital. We were in a cubicle on A&E for over 12 hours before they found us a bed on a ward. Which meant they couldn’t then use that cubicle for anyone else. Not sure how it feels to staff but to me it genuinely feels like the nhs is deteriorating in front of us.

No we shouldn’t be grateful for substandard care. Turned away from 1 hospital and 9 hour wait at the second with a child should be completely unacceptable. The staff you’ve encountered are adequately doing their jobs, and obviously the shitshow isn’t their fault, but that’s a long way off heroism. No idea what the solution is but the system is broken and it’s about time we started saying so instead of all this ‘heroes’ nonsense.

OP though - I hope your child is feeling better and you managed to get some rest.

So sorry to read all these awful experiences. We had to visit children's A&E last week as my DS's school suspected he could have swallowed a button battery (special school). We were in and out in 2 hours with 3 X-rays. Luckily it was v quiet.

I can't help but think if you're happy to sit in a hospital for 6 hours without being seen with no end in sight, or if you're even happy to be refused care and sent elsewhere, and you're then tapping away on Mumsnet rather than fighting to be seen, your child cannot be that unwell and therefore you're part of the problem.

How will fighting to be seen help? All it will do is piss of the people who you need to help you

@NNat6999 they haven't done covid testing on arrival for a very long time- it was just done on admission, they also stop segregating awhile ago as well covid+ patients generally aren't moved to a different ward now either

So is it just drunk people? Or broken bones through sports, illness due to weight, gardening accidents, car accidents? We’re all guilty of something. I’m just wondering where the line is? And no I don’t go out getting so pissed that I need hospital treatment, I’m just wondering where the line is.

And some of those drunk people will have genuine alcohol issues that they would need help with from the NHS. They may have seeked help but there probably wasn’t any available. A woman I worked with lost her son to alcoholism in his 40s, he asked for more help from his GP, his mother begged for help....Nope. He ended up in a&e numerous times. Now he’s dead. I suppose that’s him ‘weeded out’.

A lot of people drink to escape their issues...of which there’s a lot at the moment. People are miserable, many feel hopeless. So yes they might drink more and get in bad situations and need
a&e. If you engage your brain, you will realise that life is complex.

@rrwalker then maybe they should also sort out GP and Mental health services?

If I'm sitting in A&E with my child at 3am on a weekend it's because they need to be seen immediately

Agreed. I see this on MN a lot. Child has a high temperature or a cough, rush off to A&E, temp comes down but they 'still need to be seen'. Why? This isn't an A&E matter. Children often run a high temperature which while alarming is not unusual. Of course it is an emergency if your child has cancer and my heart goes out to the poster above. But so many people on MN rush their child off to A&E at the drop of a hat. They are part of the problem.

I think your analogy that EVERY person who gets piss has underlying issues is a stretch

so basically what your saying is nobody in the entire uk could of made a better choice

there will always be situations that couldn’t of been avoided and situations that could

It irritates me more when this is peddled.

The vast majority of people don't go to A&E willy nilly. But because the entire system has fallen apart they feel left with no options. They can't register with a dentist, they can't see a gp, they can't get their drugs from a pharmacy....

Many issues could be dealt with elsewhere but the elsewhere is inaccessible. Making out that being ill, scared, in pain are somehow moral failings is part of the problem and the Tories love you for blaming all the people who can't/don't just pay for private dental and online gps instead.

Yes, some people are selfish and make poor decisions. Many, many more are anxious, concerned for their loved ones, feel poorly or like they can't cope and just want some help.

I don’t know about everyone else but I followed the discharge notes I was given on Thursday after my child had his tonsils removed. He woke up screaming, blood everywhere, so now we are here.

I’ll show my sister your comments who works in A and E and deals with endless needless visits