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.

Because my job is suffering from all the long nights I spend in a and e and therefore don't sleep and don't perform well in my work.

Surely if your DC are really sick, what matters is that they are getting the medical attention they need, not your inconvenience. Yes, wait times are long but it is what is.

3/4 hours?
Thats fast!
Last time I went was with DS(16) with concussion. We were there 11 1/2 hours.

I broke my hand a few (I think seven) years ago and it was minutes to see me through xray, plastering and back to work. They told me I was millimetres away from needing surgery but I didn’t :) really really good service. A&E also get you where you need to go comparatively quickly when they know what you need. The NHS are great for making sure you don’t need to come back, if that makes sense.

I think waiting times are a disgrace.

But if OP is waiting for hours to be seen by a doctor, it's deemed that there are children/ adults that need to seen sooner than op by the triage nurse.

Or they have been given medication and it's a case of wait and see.

I don't get this post of course you can use out of ours GP in the middle of the night 111 is 24/7 you know. I understand that they sometimes direct you to a&e with a small child but you should ring them first.

I have two children one with a chronic health condition and only ever used a&e 3 times as I will try get the ill one to the doctors first.

Yes if you want to spend £1000's pounds every time you vist a&e go ahead. Even those with insurance often have high copayemnts, what you find is many just don't seek medical help at all for fear of the bill at the end.

A child having trouble breathing is most definitely an A&E trip. A very high fever in a small child which doesn't respond to medication is too.

Here in Somerset you will wait 8 hours. I was sent in twice last year with suspected DVzts and both times were 8 hours plus time for examinations/bloods/scans which took another three hours.

@cutrtain if you ever mention breaking to 111 they will send to a&e or even send an ambulance. Not saying this is wrong but if you think it's not an issue then don't tell them. I've had this issue with DS as he is asthmatic and they try to send to a&e when I know all he needs is steroids from the doctor. Although they did bounce us around between out of hours and a&e once when no one could decided how serious it was (luckily out of hours is in our hospital). Try learning to be more selective in what you tell them if all you want is an out of hours appointment.

Can you not debate without being rude? There are other options apart from your GP. For instance pharmacists are very highly trained to deal with a lot of health problems.
A&E should not always be the first port of call and I see A&E nurses overwhelmed by way too many trivial complaints then they get slated for long wait times.
It sounds harsh but that is just the way it is and it is called Accident and Emergency for a reason.
Of course if it is an emergency, that is where you absolutely need to be.

All the long nights. How many visits to a and e in say 2 months?

Because my job is suffering from all the long nights I spend in a and e and therefore don't sleep and don't perform well in my work.

How often are you using A&E to impact your sleep and job like this?

You can tell the posters who don't have small kids. IME NHS guidance seems to err on the side of caution and if there is even the slight possibility something could be serious, you are sent to a and e. When we called 111 about a child under 1, they sent an ambulance - no matter what you called about (2 years ago, this may have changed). Seemed wasteful and OTT but they are just being cautious.

But yes OP, I sympathise.

I sympathise much more with the staff who are working in the NHS. You know what, if it is such an inconvenience, you could just not go?!

It doesn’t help that it’s impossible to see a GP now. I used to at least have an urgent care centre near me but that now is impossible to get into. I had something in my eye and went a few weeks ago when it opened at 7.30am and there were already 25 people there including parents with obviously very ill kids. All standing in the freezing cold car park.
They wouldn’t even let me in because they were full before they had even opened.
It’s a desperate situation.
I hate GP’s now - properly loathe them. They are essentially money grabbing private practises.
My 14yo has awful gynaecological problems and I can’t wait for months for a referral on the NHS so I’m using my savings to go private. The GP surgery want £40 to write the referral letter. I’m already struggling to pay without that! And I’m saving the NHS money by going privately ffs.
My father in law is 90 and the only gp consultation I could get for him was a phone one. He couldn’t hear the GP - my husband and I were at work and they couldn’t change the appointment to a time we could be there. He ended up getting worse and only gave him an appointment when I actually went to the practice and cried in the reception.

@SparklingSparkle you hate GPs, properly loathe them. Charming. Well, sort yourself out then. They are only people trying to do their best in an overloaded system.

Wasn't it up to you to make sure that one of you could be there for your father in law's appointment? If it was that important. Why should the GP have to change your appointment because you are prioritising your work?

If people would start acting like responsible adults rather than petulant children, it would put less pressure on the system.

What a depressing read. I am a hospital consultant of 30 years. The NHS is not providing the service it should. In A&E or primary or secondary care. This is due to under-funding and poor management at a very senior level. And also due to the burden of social problems, homelessness, drugs, poverty and so much more.

It sounds like the OP has followed her GP’s guidance and instructions. in any case, there have always been patients who rush to A&E when they probably don’t need to go (not saying the OP is one of them). Yet the NHS has somehow coped. It no longer copes because we do not have the staff in A and E.

I cannot believe how many people are blaming the patient rather than the service. I am embarrassed of what our health service has become, and it will take a hell of a lot of investment for things to change.

My DC are mid to late 20s now. DS had asthma as a small child after bronchiolitis. A couple of times we weren't admitted but given ventolin for the nebuliser and told being at home would be less stressful as we knew what we were doing. On both occasions the GP was less than impressed and prescribed steroid tablets in addition to inhaled steroids.

DS also had rank ears, infection after infection. 28 years ago, we twice had to go to A&E because he needed AB's for an ear infection. Pharmacists used to close at 5pm on Saturdays, didn't open on Sundays and were not in 24 hour supermarkets. After several infections the GP requested the pharmacy give us the powder so we could make up the AB's ourselves. I seem to recall the pharmacist said we could have a bottle to keep in the fridge every 3 weeks because we couldn't do the making up. In the event DS didn't ever go three weeks between ear infections. He grommetted at 15 months. We had to pay because the NHS said he didn't qualify because his speech was well developed. They preferred an infant to be in constant pain, constantly unwell and constantly on AB's.

Extraordinary that the same consultants at the local hospital did the private grommets, tonsils and adenoids at the local private hospitals.

The NHS has never been particularly helpful.

Blimey how often are you in A&E that it’s affecting your job?

It's not a sympathy competition. If the original post was written by an a+e doctor then, similarly, I would also tell them I feel sorry for them for being in a shit situation.

And sure yes, I could just not go. That's always an option. But it would make me a pretty shit parent wouldn't it, to ignore medical advice within any medical training myself?

That was for @Dalchini

Totally agree with you. My dh is also a hospital consultant (25 years), he hates the fact that the public are encouraged to blame patients for the state of our NHS. The blame lies with politicians who made conscious decisions to not prioritise healthcare.

@AnotherMondayStarts please see my earlier post. In July due to an injectable for osteoporosis I had a routine liver panel. The ALP was elevated. Cue urgent ultrasound (potential mildly fatty liver), fibroscan - almost perfect liver - 3.6 and 239 (one dot over for a very mildly fatty liver) and all sorted with diet. Then a full body bone isotope scan, possible Pagets.

At that point picked up by the Consultant. "Oh, did my ITM3 Dr not suggest a isotope enzyme ALP test", "er no". "Ah, well I think that would be helpful". Result - elevated ALP predominantly from bone. Consultant has said the ALP does often raise arising from the teriparatide.

I have insurance so the ultrasound and fibroscan were done privately - despite the NHS referrals being marked urgent. About £800 I think. The full bone scan I imagine would have been about a further £800.

At NHS level the cost would have been £1000 I guess. All because someone didn't order a iso enzyme test in the first place. The waste beggars belief. It has nothing to do with under funding and everything to do with sloppy practices and poor clinical management.

Hell will freeze over before I agree to pay higher tax to fund the NHS. It doesn't work and needs replacing with a social I strange scheme as in Continental Europe.

Half the reason it's such a mess is because the public accepted sub-optimal standards for decades making excuse after excuse fkr it because it's free. It is not free and I am sick and tired of the NHS pissing my money up the wall, whilst messing me about.

Yes, not to go would absolutely make you a s**t parent. Of course it's not nice waiting ages but unless you are there multiple times a month, surely the imposition isn't that bad on the scale of your life. As other posters have said, the wait times you are quoting seem better than the current norm across the country.

Yes there are probably 20 poorly 5 year olds with a cough in an emergency department every night of the week. Most of them would be fine without treatment but one (let's say it's one a month but I don't know the real frequency) one a month will die without treatment. You lose your medical licence and the child loses their life. How many coughing five year olds are you going to leave unseen? An experienced medical professional can't necessarily tell on a quick triage. Children are known for being tricky to diagnose.

OP my brother in law is a GP and he's had several trips to emergency department with his own children in just the circumstances you describe.