To think this is a fucking joke - A@E wait?

[CanNeverThinkOfAName]

So our local hospital serves 350,000 residents from a large area.

Arrived at A&E at 11pm. Expected it to be packed and to have a long wait. There were around 15 patients waiting. At 3am there were 4 still in the waiting area plus us.

From that time only one person has been called to see a doctor and at least 10 people have gone out after being seen.

Ambulance staff check patients in near where we are sitting and only 3 have checked in since we got here.

Obviously not a busy night.

AIBU to think this is totally piss take and the staff must be on a bloody go slow or something?

The nhs is broken.

It's not just A&e.

My gp surgery the other day was DEAD. I was the only person in waiting room. There are hardly any GPs on the staff list these days. All been replaced by cheaper physician associates. I can't remember the last time I saw an actual GP. They ship you off to pharmacy or physician associates or anything to complicated you are off to A&E.

10 years ago, the gp surgery was packed most of the time. Sometimes it was hard getting a seat in waiting room.

Agree A&E is very slow my way too. There's so much inefficiency and very slow walking. Going to other rooms to get working equipment or find dressings etc.

I tend to use a bupa GP now as I can't face my drs surgery!

I hear you, I waited 9 hours last week with severe chest pain and breathing difficulties. I begged for pain killers after 5 hours and was told someone would bring me some paracetamol, asked again an hour later and they said you'll have to wait until you're seen now. Three hours later I got seen and they didn't give me anything for the pain despite me sobbing and struggling for breath. It's desperately bad and people are dying needless deaths.

@sprigatito / and then they sent you home. What was the issue?

Where I used to live in the local a and E there was, as part of it an emergency GP. Brilliant idea. The nurse triaged people and if it was suitable they went to see the GP. It was great. However it's now closed. Which seems mad. Also what happened to walk in clinics? Where have they all gone?

But people don't think about how much the newest latest treatments cost the nhs.
I looked after a child with asthma who had been approved to have a drug once a month that cost £35,000 EVERY MONTH.

So that could pay a top band 5 nurse for 12 years !and it is being spent on medication. Why on earth does a single drug cost that much every month?

What about cancer treatments that are on the rise?

God knows how much long-term health conditions that could've been preventive costs.

My stepdad: early 60's, overweight, doesn't eat a healthy diet, smokes, no exercise= 1 heart attack requiring a Emergency triple bypass, uncontrolled diabetes as he doesn't take his meds which meant he had a wound on his foot which required specialist surgery. He has also had both hips replaced and knee surgery. Recently fell down the stairs fracturing his femur, did very little to aid his own recovery by not keeping up with the physio after being discharged. Mentality/excuses of a child- I don't eat vegetables because I don't like them. Has probably cost the NHS hundreds of thousands, when in fact a lot of it could've been prevented.

Also, how the CCGS decide to spend/save money. Many don't fund vasectomies on the NHS due to the cost- but it works out way cheaper than the cost of ongoing female contraception (even long-term options), the cost of midwife appointments or abortion of an unwanted pregnancy, potential complications of pregnancy/childbirth. So in order to save £500 they end up spending well over that in the longer term.

You're right. She should have been taking care of her child. She should have started a saline drip at 60dpm, done a complete blood panel, pulled out the portable X-ray machine that she should always carry in her purse for an abdominal series and gotten her daughter on O2 @ 4L via n/c!

Oh wait.......🙄

I think its been forgotten that there were always long waits in A&E.

The 4 hour wait was brought in as an attempt to speed things up when in fact nothing has actually changed to aid the speed up of triage/treatment/discharge/admit.

Hospitals get fined when they breech wait times- make it make sense.

All of you non nhs staff complaining it’s us nhs workers have a look at the stats about “bed blocking”. You cannot run a safe and effective A&E when patients have been there for 2+ days! But the wards are full because there’s no social care sector and a huge proportion of hospital inpatients need residential care or carers or community physio or equipment at home or a hospice bed. If the wards are full then patients get stuck on a trolley in A&E, usually in a corridor.

The government can say all they want about the nhs but things will not improve until the sinking social care sector is fixed. We have an ageing population and it will only get worse.

Our almost 3 year old son was sent to a and e (gp called paediatrics to tell them we were on our way). Luckily we were seen quickly by triage and sent to a room for obs and nebuliser/oxygen. There was only 1 doctor to triage and the a and e paediatrics team were short staffed and had parents of "sick" children shouting at them demanding to get them the correct milk their baby has (mother had come in with several family members so why one of them couldn't have gone to shops and back is beyond me) another getting stroppy because they couldn't give her any calpol. I could hear the staff asking for help as they were short staffed.
In the end one nurse said nicely that everyone will be seen they are treating the very sick children first.
I felt so sorry for them and once we knew we were staying overnight in a ward and husband had returned with snacks I did offer food to them in case they hadn't had a chance to eat.
The system is broken and these people are overworked and underpaid severely.

@deebyhi lots of GPs can’t get work. It’s crazy! The government won’t fund them.

My colleagues are all saying it’ll become like dentistry and if you can afford it you see a GP. If you can’t you see a physician associate or if you’re lucky you at least get an ANP. No one will pay privately to see a physician associate.

Ive seen 2 sides of this. Earlier in the year my step dad waited 7 hours to be seen in A and E after being sent there by his GP. He is a pensioner and ended up with a 3 week stay in hospital so not a time waster. Last week my DS took ill with breathing issues. We were taken in by ambulance and he was admitted to the children's ward in around an hour having been seen in A and E and sent for an x ray. Maybe being taken in by the ambulance sped things up, I don't know.

My brother was awaiting heart surgery. He started to have chest and jaw pain and was advised to go to A&E at 5pm. By 10am the next morning he still had not seen a Dr and was advised it would be another 12 hrs waiting to be seen. A&E has always been bad but it’s just completely broken now

You seem to have misunderstood. I meant speak to reception to try to expedite her treatment. Why didyou think I meant treat her medically??

What good would that do?!

To perhaps explain her daughter was practically unconscious and in pain and could something/anything be done to get treatment started ASAP….you could of course just complain on MN. Each to their own obviously 🤷‍♀️

How on earth can you diagnose an intestinal bleed without a scan? After working in A&E for 10 years, I've seen it all. If you can walk in the door, you can wait.

This most likely.
Also the doctor could have been called into assist in theatre.

I think a lot of people also find Triage hard to grasp. We are so used to "waiting in line".

When I was waiting for Dad one lady was very impatient. I have no idea what was wrong with her but she sat opposite me and did not appear to be in pain. She was triaged within an hour but had then been sat waiting for a few hours when she asked where she was on the list as was told she was now second. An hour later, she still appeared completely stable to me, she became very vocal because "how could being second take over an hour?" A nurse explained, so patiently, that further patients had been expedited because they came in with issues needing a greater urgency. She just didn't get it...."so, I wasn't second then?"

I remember years ago when my son was lined up for scheduled morning surgery. He ended up being last of the day and others were postponed until later in the week due to emergencies coming in. He's now 25. Triage and movement for emergencies has always been a thing.

I am sorry to hear of these difficulties.
If you neglect something for 12 years as the present Government has done then it’s likely to be close to collapse.
There might be a change of Government this year if there is there will be no quick fix. However the neglect will stop and I hope slowly the NHS will get better.
If you want good health care, good Education and a good state pension then don’t be seduced by a Government that’s says you can have all that with low taxes.

@Medstudent12 how crazy is it when GPs can’t get jobs?!

I’m pretty sure she can do/ has done this anyway - it doesn’t stop her also posting her frustration on here. And we all know deep down what sort of response she’ll get from the receptionist…

Oh, do you? Ok…

But the waste and wasted time is astounding. Two examples:

When ds was a baby he was admitted via A&E with a GP letter. I had driven him there. We were transferred to the ward. I wasn't allowed to carry him there in his car seat. I had to sit in a wheelchair, with him in my arms. A porter wheeled me. A nurse was called down from the ward to carry his notes and the car seat! I asked why and was told they couldn't be responsible if I fell or dropped him. And yet I was responsible enough for the GP to send me home, pack a bag, drive there, get him out of the car, etc. 1995

Similarly when dd smashed her leg, she needed an XRay after surgery to make sure all was well for her to go home. She was taken on a trolley to XRay, pushed by a porter and we were accompanied by a nurse, who carried her notes and chatted Sh1t to the porter. Earlier the nurses had been "too busy" to make a child alone some toast - I did it. Three hours later when we were discharged, I was deemed capabke enough to get her from a wheelchair into the car and drive her 7 miles to my parents. 2007

They said they were overworked then. Go figure why the public have lost faith

I don’t think you should judge how bad someone’s injuries are by whether they’re able to sit in a chair and play with their phone.

Last week, I went to A&E after being thrown from a bike going downhill (a squirrel ran out in front of me). I have/had a shoulder broken in several places, black eye, bruising and cuts across my face, and a grazed knee.

The previous year, I had a botched IVF egg collection that left me with three ovarian cysts - 6cm, 5cm and 4cm - which flooded my abdomen with a pool of blood several hours later.

In both cases, I was sitting on playing my phone for multiple hours. In the former case (last week), I didn’t even bother with pain relief.

Having joined a forum last week for people recovering from my shoulder injury, there are people who had to be put on a morphine drip on admission to hospital because they were vomiting/fainted with the pain.

So, it’s literally pain threshold. I promise you, if your pain threshold if high enough, you can literally be bleeding out or have a bone broken in several places, and still be sitting there calmly playing with a phone!

Depends of how many people is scheduled on shifts and how many real emergencies had come on ambulance. There are more patients to attend that the ones that are waiting in the room.
It is frustrating and infuriating? yes. Is a piss taking?, not necessarily.
Service should be better? Definitely. NHS should have more staff and funds? Of course.