I'm so fucking sick of a and e wait times

[cutrtain]

As a working mother to a toddler in nursery, I'm just fucking done with how long it takes to get help in a and e for my child.

It's starting to make me not want to go, in situations that I would have maybe gone in the past.

I'm absolutely exhausted. It's always 3/4 hours wait, at least.

I'm just so done with it. It's a disgrace.

The only time we’ve seen an out of hours GP has been at 1 am. You can get an out of hours GP appointment by calling 111.

How is visiting A&E a thing that you do frequently? I did it once per child up to the age of 18. One knocked himself out on his bike when he hit a tree, the other when he knocked a tooth out when he fell off his bike. Any other issues throughout childhood were dealt with by the GP . How can you be visiting A&E on a regular basis ?

Blimey does your child have additional medical needs ? How many times does a child go to A&E ? I have 3 children 20 , 7 and 1 and I have only been in A&E 3 times with my kids . I know times are long but you must be going lots of times if it’s affecting you that badly

This is completely false, and dangerous.

A young child with a very high fever that doesn't come down or with any kind of breathing issues belongs in A&E.

The GP would send them straight there anyway. A lot of people on here have no idea what they are talking about.

Since covid the A and E near me has has a revamp which makes so much more sense. You call the number who will assess if emergency/life critical. Then 5 minutes later you get a call from someone who will hear your problem in more detail and then triage you. They will then provide you with a time to head into an and e. A text then comes through confirming what time you need to be in an and e, you go there and are dealt with straightaway. All the waiting time is done in the comfort of your own home.

Private GP, job done in less than 5 mins, & results in x2 days max. GP calls & emails. Next patient ready to go outside.

So that's part of the problem. I didn't know that. It doesn't seem like it would cost a fortune. Apparently, from someone who had one very recently, he arrived, was checked in by the technician who had the form he's filled in online, the whole appointment was done by the technician, the patient left at the end, the MRI results were looked at by a DR and emailed to the patient 3 days later. He took them to an appointment with a private surgeon and is having a hip joint 'tidy-up' in early January privately.

Has waited since Easter on NHS and not even been seen for initial consultation. Waiting list for op is 9 months from initial consultation here.

I’m 33, been to A&E once. The issues you are attending for are neither accidents nor emergencies and you’re exactly the reason why wait times are so high!

We have a dedicated paediatric a&e (but no walk ins or urgent care, which would be great for ds...) which is fantastic. Always triaged within 10 minutes. Absolutely the head injuries/asthmatics etc should be seen first vs my son (4) who can't stop vomiting after days/has broken his thumb.

I wouldn't be at a&e for constipation or fever alone. Ds almost is in a&e remarkably often, or with dietician/paediatrician/eye hospital. No underlying diagnosis. Currently awaiting 2 surgeries for random things. He's been kept in several times for a few days for IV antibiotics for things like Scarlet Fever or cellulitis. It's annoying, especially both working full time with a younger (but very healthy) girl, but ds gets great care, which I'm grateful for.

I'm pretty scathing of the healthcare available for adults in our small town, but the kids at least are addressed quickly. I've never been to a&e in this country in my life (have abroad for anaphylaxis though), and only once for dp - he had much worse care/waits than our ds even after arrival by ambulance!

Edit - my point is that some kids are extremely unlucky/accident prone, and do need a&e frequently. No one goes for fun. My dd has never been. When my ds gets tonsillitis or strep, he collapses within 24 hours and just doesn't wake up or take in fluids. Floppy and unresponsive. Trying to hang on until Monday when it starts up on Friday or Saturday just doesn't work. GP diagnosed a stye when he had orbital cellulitis - a week in hospital and he almost lost the eye.

Less time, more pressure. Why would t it have something to do with it?

I’ve got 3 kids - one with epilepsy and another who is very sporty and quite accident prone, and one who just seemed prone to high fevers/rashes as a toddler. We’ve had our fair share of trips to A&E and other wards - everything has deteriorated terribly in recent years.

Waiting times, appointment times, lack of adequate care on wards - it is utterly shocking how much worse things are. This government is a disgrace.

OP you're absolutely right to go to A&E, my daughter had pneumonia which wasn't picked up by Drs, but was by A&E and needed urgent treatment. She had a temperature.

It is dire. Unfortunately I don't expect it to get any better for a long time.

Why the hell are people determining whether someone deserves A&E or not
You can’t get a drs appointment. 15 years ago you phoned the drs at 8am for your ear infection and had your antibiotics by tea time. Now it’s phone every single day to be told that within 3 minutes there’s no appointments, or to be triaged by a receptionist that can somehow determine whether you’re ill or not from a set of questions over the phone. If you’re suffering with tonsillitis or a chest infection and you’re on day 3 of desperately needing antibiotics and don’t have access to a walk in centre or GP apt then what is the expectation? To just see if you die or not because no one can set foot in A&E unless you’re in the midst of a cardiac arrest or your arms falling off?

Theres so much sympathy out there for those who work for the NHS, why is it impossible to extend the sympathy for those who need to use it.

Our GP is horrendous. You can only get an appointment if you ring at 8am on the dot for one on the same day and still have 40+ people in the queue in front of you. There are no appointments booked in advance.

Once I was elated as I was number 1 then got cut off!

If no appointments left you are actually told to go to A&E if you think it’s urgent or try ringing in again the next day. That’s what happened last year with DS. They wouldn’t even let him see a nurse for a quick fingerprick to check his blood sugars as 111 suggested when I realised he had symptoms of Type 1 diabetes, told me go to A&E as they had no appointments left. He did have Type 1 but if he hadn’t (I bloody wish) that would have been a complete waste of A&E’s time. You even have to wait 4 weeks for a telephone consultation about blood test results!

So it’s no wonder people end up in A&E.

@cutrtain as someone who also had multiple A&E trips for tonsillitis, you have my sympathy! We had exactly the same thing, the tonsillitis sends the temperature sky high, and that then sent DS heart rate and breathing rate up (and oxygen sats down). Week day GPs would call the hospital pediatrics department for advice, and the i could choose whether to go home with antibiotics whilst promising to monitor DS closely or go onto hospital. However, once you hit amber on the NHS fever scoring system, my experience was out of hours GPs won't see you, they send you to A&E.

What was particularly frustrating is that once you then get to A&E, when the next Calpol dose is due they give your toddler a massive weight based dose. That then controls the temperature, which sorts out the heart rate / breathing, and also sorts out the pain so they drink - and then you have a very active toddler climbing around A&E for hours...

You don't say how old your toddler is. If they are higher centile (above 50th ish centile for a 3 year old) one of the problems you might be having is that based on the over the counter bottles, you can't actually give them enough nurofen / Calpol for it to be properly effective. The age based doses for Calpol are the same age 2-4, and for nurofen for ages 1-4, so are based on what's safe for much smaller children. Once I got a paramedic to give us a weight based dose for nurofen, we did much better at staying out of A&E.

A&E is now third world territory. My 93 yr old father was admitted in January after a fall and was there for 3 days during which time he became incontinent for the first time. People were lying everywhere on trolleys for the whole time we were there. After eventually being admitted for physio/mobilisation he deteriorated and died weeks later. The care on the ward was non existent - we looked after him. My junior doctor daughter has worked in A&E recently and has to walk past people shouting help because she is run ragged and can’t stop. I’m a retired nurse and am horrified at how bad things have got in the NHS.

I sympathise OP.
DS started nursery last year and got everything going all the time and that’s when we discovered he gets a fever that’s sky high with literally any kind of infection. So we ended up going to A&E 3-4 times that year because it would shoot up to 40+ and wouldn’t stay down with calpol and nurofen. He was admitted once, kept for observation twice and very quickly diagnosed with tonsillitis the fourth time. Once we were sent from 111, twice from an actual GP appointment as they were worried about sepsis and once we went because it was the middle of the night and we just couldn’t get his fever to stay down.

so all the posters having a go, great that your kids don’t get fevers like this but when they do it’s bloody horrible. DS has thankfully - touch wood - grown out of it a bit now and doesn’t get a fever with every cold or virus going but it nearly broke me last year. Luckily our A&E waiting times weren’t too bad, largely because we have a separate paediatric A&E - I dread to think what it would be like otherwise.

Mind you I have to say it was pretty bad five years ago when my grandad was admitted with a broken hip and left on a trolley for ten hours, in a corridor, with a threadbare blanket and half a cup of water because they had no beds and hardly any staff…

When I worked in an inner city A&E debt 40 yrs ago patients often waited for hours to be seen and treated. Admissions were more speedy because there were more beds back then and lots of council care homes ( care packages were not a thing).
Waiting times became and issue when the public’s attention was drawn to the length of time people waited.
40yrs ago parents still had the skills to deal with common childhood illnesses, most of which have been eradicated by vaccination programs. Understandably, because we rarely experience really ill children, simple pyrexia ( temp) and fever are now seen as an emergency.
OP has not said whether she has taken her child to see her GP for a routine in hour’s appointment to see if there are underlying health problems. Maybe a visit is overdue.

I have been doing 111 referral work and we are beginning to see patterns after 6months. We frequently see the same people who, despite having access to their own dentist, repeatedly use the 111 system because “it is quicker” 111 have to offer an appointment within 24hrs. They often fabricate symptoms to get a face to face appointment because they want their treatment brought forward despite having an appointment with their own dentist. They assume we will do the treatment. We are not there for routine treatment.

I fully understand that it is costly and difficult taking time off from work to seek medical treatment but if you use OOHs, Urgent and A&E you have to expect to wait according to your needs.

My DH had a stroke last year, it was 5pm on a Fri, not the best time to need NHS emergency services. The ambulance arrived in under 15 mins and DH was in the ED before 6pm. He was scanned and treated with anticoagulants by 8.30pm and on the stroke ward by 9.30pm. There is nothing wrong with A&E if you have a genuine emergency. I wasn’t allowed to accompany DH , it was still Covid rules. I thought that he would struggle to advocate for himself but I needn’t have worried. I suspect that when relatives were not allowed in, staff were able to work without interruption and with much greater efficiency. I am eternally grateful to them for returning my DH to me almost as he was before the stroke.

@CrabbyCat this is us too! We’ve had times when we’ve been begging not to be sent to a&e because we know it will just make his heart rate higher as he gets so distressed and they won’t let him go til it comes down, but once you’ve scored highly enough they have to send you…

sorry for the multiple posts my app is glitching like mad tonight

No. Fevers are protective, it's irrelevant if they 'come down' or not. Sure if a child has a constant fever for other 5 days they should be reviewed in GP but it's pretty rare they persist that long and anecdotally most I see presenting it's 1-3 days intermittent fever and just not something in itself that is concerning.

Many breathing issues don't warrant a trip to A&E, or even to see a GP in the majority of children with 'breathing issues'. Obviously if a child has blue lips struggling with speech/cry, using accessory muscles/tugging then A&E but the majority of breathing difficulties seen now are literally sore throat + cough with anxious parents who listen to this crap about going to get 'checked out' just in case. Stop parroting that dangerous nonsense. Goto A&E if you're looking at your child and to you they look really unwell i.e. an emergency and clearly not a normal illness and you have reason to think they need emergency treatment. Our childrens A&E has a soft play corner that parents more often than not are dragging children out of when they're called to be seen, it's a wonderful triage tool and it's always documented in notes "playing in soft play on arrival, appears well..."

There's a great website here for advice on an array of illness and when to see GP/A&E and gives a good rundown of what to look for if thinking an ailment might need medical attention and things you can try at home first which could either be reassuring or show clear need to goto GP/hospital:
https://www.what0-18.nhs.uk/parentscarers/worried-your-child-unwell

maybe the waits are so long because so many people turn up with issues that are neither an accident nor an emergency.

High fever, fast breathing and grunting was what had my DD blue lighted to hospital at 10 weeks old with viral meningitis.

Good job I didn’t piss about on websites to see whether it warranted A&E, or try ringing the GP everyday for a week cos she’d be dead by now.

Generally if you get to see the GP they will call the hospital and send the child direct to the admissions unit, I wonder why they’ve sent you to a&e? Do you have a ealk
in centre/ minor ailments near you? You also might want to make a non urgent appointment with the GP to get some bloods etc done if your child is getting really sick that frequently, there might be something simple you could do eg might have a nutritional deficiency

It’s a disgrace and also very sad. What a mess. I was there with my DD last week… 8 hours we waited! Never known anything like it and usually find in our area, with kids especially, they are very quick to see/treat… well not anymore 😢