NHS - this is why people don't care

[br0kenankle]

In peads A&E with daughter as went over on ankle and it swelled up like a balloon. Been hear 1 hr 30 mins. Paeds A&E not busy - maybe 3-4 patients. Staff everywhere - must be about 10 people milling around tbe computers doing very little. No wheel chair so have been carrying her round the hospital to X-ray , toilet etc.

Just seem to be on a go slow. If I were this slow at my job, i would be in trouble. 🤷‍♀️

Expect to get flames for this of course. We were sat outside X-ray for 10 mins and when they came out, they didn't realise we had been sitting there. I have a hungry grumpy in pain 6yr old.

You can't get free treatment anywhere, unless it's provided by a charity. You pay for it via tax or insurance or directly.

I agree that 1.5 hours isn't excessive for an x-ray and diagnosis of a suspected broken ankle. There is a lot of paperwork and admin that people will be waiting for. They will also all be dealing with several patients at the same time. It's not as simple as the doctor is sitting around waiting for the x-ray to pop out. It would be a lot more efficient but more expensive too if the doctor themselves dealt with the patient from start to finish. To make it cheaper they have lots of lesser qualified staff doing the checking in, triage etc. That does make it less efficient as notes have to be repeatedly transferred.
A good service to me would be something like get triaged within few minutes of arrival, get an X ray within half an hour, get a diagnosis within half an hour and then get any necessary bandaging, casting, admission to ward or discharge within half an hour. So 1.5 hours total. For something not requiring an x-ray it should be possible to be seen and have medication prescribed within an hour. My experience is that it takes 5 or more hours.

Oh FFS can people not eat now? They've probably not had a proper break. You don't listen anyway as you're just rattling on still with your nonsense' observations

The nurses I’ve worked with in A&E have normally been running around giving meds, doing obs, doing ecgs, rolling patients, changing beds when they are bloody and urine soaked (from clinical problem not inattention), catheterising, setting up ventilators, setting up infusions, doing medication checks, getting controlled drugs out of a locker (takes 2 nurses) and ENDLESS paperwork (necessary for when we get sued). If it’s quiet they won’t need to do any of those things, therefore they could be standing around waiting for the time the next obs are due or for a doctor to action something.

I can tell you work in mh using the term revolving door patients its absolutely disgusting terminology and everything what is wrong with mh services in this country. I think you have proved my point. Do better

In your opinion it wasn’t busy, but really despite your apparent prime location where you could see and know everything going on in the hospital you don’t have a clue how busy or not the staff were and what else might be going on. In and out in a couple of hours for something very minor is pretty good going.
Having witnessed the other side, where your loved one is the one receiving the urgent attention, because they desperately need it, whist other complain about waiting I know which side of the fence I prefer.

br0kenankle · Today 21:18
No issue waiting when it is busy. But I can't emphasise brought how there was nothing going on. So if 2.5 hours is tbe norm with no patients then what must it be like when there are people to see“

You have no idea what is or isn’t “going on”. The NHS have saved my husband’s life twice.

You, Poster, are a huge reason why I, aged 60, am working my frontline NHS notice.

I'm a very, very experienced, very good CT and MRI radiographer. With almost 40 years experience.

I've had enough of your shit. Your disrespect, your complete lack of ability to differentiate the 'calm swan above, paddling like crazy against the current below' -when staff talk about their outside lives within EARSHOT of you - fancy!- to people just getting on with their 13 hour shift.

It's fine. I will be replaced. My 100% UK trained team of 3-4 years ago are now 18/20 non UK/EU trained. If you voted Brexit; then Tory, you're okay with this.

Did you?

Ppl have NO IDEA what a shit-show the NHS has become.

Your substandard service might be due to staff who no longer really care, given the disrespect the public have shown them; or due to 3rd world staff , employed en mass, post Brexit, who have no idea what's expected of them. All the while, understaffed.

They are rushing to tell you you have no way of knowing how many people are there even though you are there and everyone is either on a mini ward or in waiting room and you can see whether it's busy or nor. While the posters on here know it's full and staff are busy despite sitting there in full view twiddling their thumbs and despite those posters not actually being there.. They heard on the news that nhs are busy and that's all they believe. Same thickos that went in/past/through empty, overstaffed A&Es in Covid and didn't believe their eyes but believed what the rabid men on the news were screaming. Sheeple and lemmings that don't like to think or question anything.
NHS is poorly run, often overstaffed with the lowest quality employees at all levels in many places, and patients are treated like an inconvenience and generally nobody usually cares, the staff are generally unsackable. They are rarely overstretched or if they are it's due to the extremely poor quality of human resources in the recent years.
You have a very good point.

@Ionlydrinkondaysendinginy

It's medical terminology. The revolving door effect is when patients get better and then relapse. Which happens to lots of people. It's not a slight It's a fact.
I'm doing great thanks and I hope you are too.

Yes. You don't know what else is going on.

I'm too naive!

This hadn't occurred to me! Thanks for the heads-up.

Tell me you have no idea how hospitals work without telling me you have no idea how hospitals work.
A small paeds A&E won’t have a specific registrar/consultant just for that area. They’re likely covering CAU and the wards too. It may well take 2 hours for a doctor to review a non-urgent x-ray. You’ve no idea what is going on elsewhere in the hospital.

But if the acutely sick child is the reason op's daughter is facing a long delay, then the department is understaffed and it's a poor service. That's nothing against the individual staff who are as good or bad as any cross section of society. Ok the op's child can safely wait, but if another sick child comes in, they may well (and frequently do) die if they have to wait. Let's not pretend that the seriously ill patients are all treated quickly enough

People have very low expectations of the NHS. Imagine there was a 2 hour wait to pay for your shopping in Tesco... Would that be poor service, or would it be justified if they only had one checkout assistant who was busy at another store?

It wouldn't really matter because the customers would just go to buy food elsewhere. The poor overworked checkout assistant (or maybe they are just lazy) is clearly not the issue - it's management failing to provide enough staff to meet demand.

Most of us have no alternative to the NHS which is the only reason that most of us continue to put up with waiting hours in pain or with suffering children. Or with high rates of maternal deaths or death while waiting for an ambulance, poor cancer recovery rates, etc etc.

But it’s not free is it? Isn’t this what we pay some of our taxes for?

'But if the acutely sick child is the reason op's daughter is facing a long delay, then the department is understaffed and it's a poor service.'

Bingo.

Not the doctors. We all get there’s not enough doctors. We’re asking about the nurses visibly stood by the desk, chatting, for extended periods, whilst the senior nurse does the computer, the docs run in a blur and the HCAs do everything else. These nurses aren’t ‘with someone more ill’ or ‘busy in resus’ or ‘working on the wards’. They’re stood. Chatting, laughing and not moving from where they’re stood. For a long time.

stop deflecting with how busy the doctors/radiologists/phlebotomists are. What are the nurses there for? In Paeds A and E? What job requires them to stand chatting?

We were out in 2.5 hours but if it was broken would it have taken another 2.5 to sort? On a super quiet Thursday - that is unacceptable. Remove tbr fact that it is our NHS and you wouldn't accept that service anywhere else. We should expect better

YOU
DON’T
KNOW
WHAT
IS
HAPPENING
IN
RESUS

You don’t know what is happening anywhere in the hospital. Christ almighty.

You should be so fucking ashamed of criticising a doctor for ‘bimbling past with a biscuit’.

I don't believe there are nurses stood around chatting for hours.
I do believe there are lots of anti nurse posters.

Not lots - some.

Don't feed the troll.

100% not a genuine poster. Here to wind you up.

No one is this dense. This density is reserved for like... elements and black holes.

@Doesthepopeshitinthewoods I actually gave a fair description of what she was doing. She was bimbling and she was eating a biscuit. 🤷‍♀️

@PomRuns honestly - as a cardiac patient I can honestly say 100% from them, they’re bloody amazing, every doctor, nurse, HCA and porter.

My issues are through lived experience with Paeds A and E.

I did have a cardiac emergency admission where the nurses chatted for 2.5 hours before getting the meds I was on 6 weeks post RCA STEMI to me. (I was right next to the desk and can tell you EVERYTHING about Kimberley in the accommodation).

But I have definitely witnessed groups of nurses stood chatting by the matrons desk when my kids were small and we had visits to Paeds A and E.. I realise waits are caused by lack of docs/decision makers. What I would like to understand are the duties of these nurses stood around having a gab.

If there was so much else going on then why were they all hanging out in tbr middle of the a&e doing nothing in-particular?