A&E time wasters.

[ConfusedMumma99]

I don’t know if I’m just thinking like this because I’ve not been in a situation. But are people genuinely being ridiculous for the reasons of going to A&E

a friend took her son (20 months) to a&e because he got a temperature of 38.8. By the time the nurse took it at a&e it was normal and she said it was because she’d given him Calpol??????? She then said he was running round the waiting room eating snacks.

am i a cow???? Or why would use a&e for this? I appreciate lots in the news about strep A. But surely you would wait and see if temp came down with Calpol/nurofen? That’s what I’d do with my child.

however I am a first time mum so im worried I should take illness more seriously? Do you really need a hospital visit just for a temperature?

our local A&E had wait times of 14 hours the other day??? Is this a combo of lack of
staff or people going unnecessarily.

I know GP’s are notoriously bad for appointments?

how are people seen in A&E? By time spent or by severity?? It seems scary that if you actually needed a&e that you might not get seen.

That's because for some things neurofen must not be used. Chicken pox for instance, so parents err on the side of caution and stick to calpol.

Perhaps there needs to be a campaign to get rid of the concerns.

In our area there used to be a crisis service for adults with MH issues which was run by an MH charity and partly funded by the council. The council pulled the funding and it closed, so where are all those people going to go when they're in crisis? A&E of course, there is nowhere else for them.

Domestic violence services- cut to the bone. Drug and alcohol services- cut to the bone. Youth offending services- cut to the bones. Services for people with Learning Disabilities- cut to the bone. All has a knock on effect on emergency services, including A&E.

Children wait up to a year round here for therapy for MH issues, and when their parents call to say they are suicidal and they can't keep them safe all the GP or 111 can suggest is that they take them to A&E.

People with conditions that cause chronic pain and other debilitating symptoms are waiting longer for specialist referrals, investigations and routine surgery. This puts an additional strain on A&E as people end up attending for issues that have become more problematic whilst they wait for the treatment they need.

My friend who is a GP is seeing elderly people who have become unwell due to living in cold homes, children and parents becoming unwell due to living in homes with mould and damp and people whose issues are largely social and environmental, but cannot get help from social care. This all contributes to difficulty obtaining GP appointments and people ending up in A&E.

The system is fucked. Anyone who works for the NHS or with vulnerable people who depend on health and social care services will tell you it was already fucked before covid. The pandemic just exposed and magnified all the cracks in the system that have been papered over for a decade. But it's easy for the Government to blame covid, and if that doesn't work blame the people for being "time wasters". The gaslighting, wilful negligence and lack of accountability is sickening.

I'm on the fence here.

Covid restrictions have meant that a lot of kids are getting their first proper run of winter viruses now, so first time parents haven't built up the knowledge base of how their children react when ill - one of mine spikes a high fever that takes about 3 hours to come down after first calpol dose but is then controllable - took a while to realise that his temps do eventually respond but not very fast. He had ongoing viral wheeze for 2 years which contra-indicated ibuprofen but he's ok with it now - the Covid restriction period was enough to finally shift the viral wheeze tendencies. He also had drama with chicken pox (temperature not responding to calpol and ibuprofen obviously not recommended for that one plus wheeze and crackles). You're also getting several years worth of children in one winter rather than spread out over their years of birth.

Also Covid related - the kids have far less resistance to the random childhood viruses so are reacting worse to them. This is the first winter that schools are back to normal without enforced supervised hand washing...

We've also got cost of living affecting diets and heating, plus poor quality housing with a tendency to damp, all of which will make children more likely to get ill and be sicker when they are.

We also still have people with health anxiety triggered by Covid, but I suspect they'll be avoiding a&es for fear of catching something!

Hahahahaha I have just shown that to my A&E nurse friend and she is laughing 🤣

@Thisbastardcomputer I'm so sorry for your loss. We have the same experience with our doctors locally too. Hope you're okay x

The system is fucked. Anyone who works for the NHS or with vulnerable people who depend on health and social care services will tell you it was already fucked before covid
Absolutely , our trust and I'm sure many others declared themselves critical incident every winter way before covid.

I agree with you, OP. I was so annoyed when I heard that one of my husband's mates at work said he goes to a&e when he's severely dehydrated, they put him on drip and he feels so good after that. My husband told him "you know you might as well drink water and avoid visit to a&e, right?".

Yes to the problems with 111. They called an ambulance for us before even when we said we'd make our own way. I'm so careful when I call them now.

My mate is a paediatric A&E doctor and says that she feels like punching the parents who bring in kids with earaches then complain about the wait because of triage.
She dealt with a child who’d been in a car accident and seriously injured, and her next patient was a kid with a cough who’s dad went ballistic as they had to wait 4 hours to be seen.
she managed not to tell him to go F himself and that she’d just saved the life of a 5 year old, just sent him home and told them to take Calpol

Part of the problem is that people don’t seem to have time for their children to be ill. They bring them in wanting treatment, a lot of the time there is no treatment other than calpol or nurofen which you can give at home. But they want their child fixed.

Look at another thread where a couple of posters said they get their child seen every time they have a temperature over 38. It’s crazy!

We are absolutely overwhelmed with patients in a&e right now, a fair number self discharge or have been waiting for over 12 hours to be seen.

There is a lot of misinformation about how to treat a temperature on here, it’s not always about the number on the thermometer.

YANBU. The last time I was in A&E (2019ish) with my dad after he had a dangerous reaction to some medication, there was a woman there bleating to the triage nurse that "I've had a cold for five days and it won't shift". The poor guy's face. You could almost see him biting his tongue.

27 years ago I had a baby who had quite severe wheeziness/asthma after bronchiolitis at 4 months. At 8 months he developed intractable ear infections that only cleared with ABs.

Even 27 years ago outside 8.30-6pm. Not at all pm on Wednesdays, the only solution was A&E. A outlet of times the GP was staggered he hadn't been admitted re the breathing.

He was grommetted at 16 months. Privately, not a chance on the NHS even in 1996! It was no better once labour were in. In fact I think it got worse accessibility wise. DD was grommetted at 20 months - again privately. It got harder and harder to book GP appointments from that point and that was when the silly 28 day prescribing came in.

It got harder and harder to book GP appointments from that point and that was when the silly 28 day prescribing came in

I never had trouble booking gp appointments until now. Wasn’t 28 day prescribing about safety?

I now support people who are combi-feeding their babies. There is a lot of fear and concern about what is normal and what isn't. In terms of baby behaviour, spit up/vomiting, settling, what is constipation etc. Some of that is because of lack of family support networks but also lack of access to lines of support which used to be accessed via children's centres or the Health Visitor clinic. You could go and have a reassuring chat, realise a lot of things are 'normal' and not need to see a doctor etc.

It's almost impossible to get advice about using formula - in my area HVs would only support breastfeeding, there are numerous BFing groups but nothing for combi or FFing. Formula feeders get told to look at the package - but that just causes concern because babies tend not to want the amount/frequency given on the package!

That then leads to multiple trips to GPs or even A&E because the baby has been sick, hasn't pooed for a couple of days, is unsettled etc.

The NHS was on its knees in 1996.

The Labour government pledged to funding up to the European average and did so. Waiting lists came down.

You might not think that the NHS was good enough, but the data shows increased funding and increased access once the funding had trickled through.

Running a health service is expensive. You can't have an excellent tax funded service in a country that chases low taxes. And yes, I know taxes post covid are higher than they've ever been, but there was ten years of underfunding before the pandemic. You need to train and look after staff, you need to maintain buildings. You can't do that on the cheap

I spent 8 hours in A&E last night after a bad fall and hitting my head. It was like a war zone. The parents taking children didn’t upset me at all- you have to be cautious with kids, but the bloody people who brought the whole family with them, like it was a day out made my blood boil. One family had 5 people for one adult who was unwell. Elderly people who were I’ll or injured had to stand while they sat eating sandwiches and crisps- perfectly well. They need to be really firm on who comes in.

It's not unreasonable for the public to want to access healthcare when they need it. It's probably quite easy to think if your feeling ill and you think you're getting worse on an evening or weekend that you might as well get yourself up to A&E to start your 15 hour wait.

I am ill at the moment - probably a viral chest infection. High temp, cough, shivers, fatigue, muscle pain - the lot. I'm lucky enough to have a warm house, supportive husband to look after the children and all the medication etc i need to ensure i can look after myself at home.

What if you're not in that position? Where can that person go if they're feeling worse and they can't get seen by the GP? most people would probably just think a&e. You can't put people off going there if you aren't offering a viable alternative. 111 isn't working well.

We pay enough tax for the NHS to provide decent basic healthcare for everyone. The problem is it's completely mismanaged, there's horrific amounts of waste and there's been a concerted effort by the Tories to destroy it and privatise it.

@shreddies it's been on it's knees since shortly after 1948. It doesn't work; it never has really.

Whilst I'm happy to pay more tax, for nurses to be paid more, etc, I am not happy for the idiotic bureaucracy to continue. Society has spent too long chasing rainbows metaphorically and literally.

Take for example my local area. Hospital 1 has been graded as needs improvement for years - the A&E still is. It has no orthopaedic oversight at all, no consultant outside normal working hours Mon to Friday or at weekends and no emergency surgical facility.

If an ambulance is called and the patient has a broken hip or another fracture that needs surgery but the skin is intact, they have to be taken by Secam to hospital 1 which maybe only 1/2 a mile further away than Hospital 2 which has full facilties. Them's the rules

Even outside this covid/post covid period, an elderly person was assessed at hospital 1, left on a trolley for hours, often without pain relief, until an ambulance was available to transfer them to Hospital 2.

It isn't rocket science to work out that it would have taken fewer resources to take the patient straight to Hospital 2 notwithstanding physically and emotionally better for the patient.

There are CEOs of hospital and ambulance Trusts involved in the above and A&E Consultants at each site who allow the above nonsense to happen and justify it.

As long as the sort of nonsense above continues I want not a penny more of mine going to run the shit show. If five or six individuals on £130k can't do it, they need a double lobotomy less the anaesthetic. They are paid more from the public purse than the three local MPs combined.

It's quite true. Epsom & St Helier.

But was there any reason you didn't wait half an hour or so for the paracetamol to kick in before you rang for advice? I thought most parents would medicate at home first (home thermometers are sometimes a bit inaccurate) and then only seek advice if the temp wasn't coming down after meds?

Because the 111 handler told me he needed to be seen urgently so to call 999. So clearly making that initial phone call rather than waiting half an hour was the right thing to do. Probably not just because the temperature was nearing 42 but because my son also told me he felt he was going to pass out.

I’d panic with a sick child, I think, given how quickly I got the vet out for a sick horse (you can’t hang about with horses, they’re surprisingly fragile). I was in A&E when I had a clot (figured it needed blood thinners pretty quick) and a woman in the cubicle next to me was told she had scabies. I did not think that constituted an emergency. Another lady had a strained knee. A drunk man had had his ear torn in a fight. Don’t know where else you’d get stitches at 2am, really.

It’s a dilemma. I think if you’re triaged, be prepared to wait for hours, be prepared to be told to see your gp. I don’t remember seeing anyone being told to leave (I’ve been to A&E a few times over the years, always serious, I wouldn’t go for minor stuff) but I think if people were turned away, they’d possibly be aggressive and argue.

All of this.

I don't know how long it's been jobs for the boys, but as our family have the used the NHS more than most, I can see that the actual service to patients has declined hugely in 20 years.

Governments have become so divorced from the actual business of running a country - bins, broken bones etc.

overnight I had an adult friend message to say she was going to A&E as she felt so poorly. She’s got this flu thing that everyone else does. Said she needs some
antibiotics. Told her it probably can’t be treated with antibiotics and that the wait will be very long. Suggested calling her GP in the morning?

the only thing that convinced her not to go to A&E was another friend said she’d wait less time calling the doctors in the morning and getting.

utter madness

Dh has only been to a&e once in the 25 years we’ve been together. That was for insect bites and he was admitted for IV abx. It was a weekend and we have no out out of hours or utc here .

Yep I see a LOT of this. No capacity for self care and the attitude that there is a pill for everything. I often tell people they are better off going home, go to bed, have some paracetamol, plenty of fluids rather than siting in a waiting room for 7+ hours. If you are still concerned call GP in the morning or get an out of hours appointment where you don't have to wait around for hours to see a Dr!