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?

I'm not in UK, I'm in Ireland. I am so beyond sick of having to be understanding about crap healthcare. I'm also fed up of being expected to burst into applause every time a doctor or nurse does their job, which they're being paid to do. In Ireland my experience with public health care has been really long a&e waits, massive over crowding and completely apathy and unprofessionalism from doctors and nurses, does my head in.

I'm so sorry for your needless death That must have been traumatic for you

But the point made below by an A&E doctor below concurs. Pain is not a proxy for severity of injury, but in the majority of cases, if you can walk in, sit down, explain yourself then that is not a life threatening emergency. It may be painful, you may need treatment, but it is a lesser need than someone who is under life threatening circumstances. That is usually why people must wait for a now very limited public resource.

There have been posts on this thread about broken ankles and one person seeking painkillers for unspecified reasons. The first by itself is not an emergency so must wait, the second is probably not an accident either.

This.
It's largely a problem of our own making.

How is your daughter? Have you been seen yet?

Don’t really know why you’re being shitty with me 🤷‍♀️

Your contribution has been to question why the OP isn’t doing more and make needling comments about how she’s able to use her phone.

In all honesty, what the hell do you think a receptionist can do to help? It’s been pointed out hundreds of times on this thread that the staff are busy and strictly prioritising. The system doesn’t change because someone pesters the receptionist. (The system is shite.)

My 80 yr old mother waited 40 weeks for an appointment with a consultant whose first words to her, after examining her were “you poor, poor lady🙁”. She has a stage 4 prolapse of her pelvic organs requiring a full pelvic repair and hysterectomy. She is a carer for my 82 yr old dad who has Parkinson’s and vascular dementia. How long will it be before she has this operation on NHS as in his words “it needs doing next week” (and he has 4 other ladies in a similar position) - currently a 12 month waiting list!

My mother has had a miserable existence waiting for the consultant appointment, she certainly can’t face another 12 months with her insides falling out. A farm animal has more protection than she has - a farmer would be prosecuted if he left a sheep in her condition. Words cannot described how I feel about the NHS right now. The consultant kindly gave her his secretary’s number so she can use her meagre savings (providing social services approve of their use for private surgery🤔) to have it done privately whilst paying for my dad to go into respite care why she has the surgery (it will wipe out most of their savings). Unfortunately we don’t have the funds to help atm but I will move in with her whilst she recovers.

@kittensinthekitchen I hope I've simply misunderstood your comment but if not, what a nasty and sarcastic thing to say to someone who has recently had a horrible experience

Oh do fuck off - my Dh walked into A&E, was ‘triaged’ and sent home with instructions to make an appointment with his GP - the doctors didn’t do any investigation and he died at home later that day …so no, it’s perfectly possible to be dying and still able to walk into A&E - it’s attitudes like yours which killed my husband (post-mortem showed he had no underlying conditions - if the problem had been investigated it’s possible he’d still be here today)

We went to children's A&E with DC very early one morning (GP advised) and was shocked to find it was silent and disserted like in 28 Days Later. Seemed there was only one other child. Still there for 4 hours. GP surgery is like this too. 6 weeks for an appointment. No patients in sight when you go along.

Probably because you aren't seeing the serious cases, they don't get pushed through the waiting room

After my last visit to A / E ( just before xmas )..i totally see where you are coming from..there is alot of people who turn up eating/ drinking, having a good old chat..how can they be a emergency..i feel sorry for every A/E Doc & nurse because they are literally run off their feet..A & E.. is NOT a walk in clinic !!

You are quite right. The biggest issue (it seems to me) is that lots of things have often gone wrong by the time you get to see a doctor, but the 'system' then assumes that every subsequent step will complete entirely successfully.
Using their real world experience of how things work (or not) would make everyone safer.

It's awful, I don't know how it can be made better but it needs to be. My husband went to A&E a few weeks ago for a suspected PE. He arrived at 2:30pm and arrived back home at 8am the next day.

Absolutely appaling.

The bed-blocking issue is a major issue and not one that is within the control of hospital staff.
However, from a taxpayer's perspective, we have never paid so much to the Department for Health and Social Care.

I think it's pretty unacceptable that you can overhear all of this, actually. Surely they should have better security and confidentiality for patients.

You cannot run a safe and effective A&E when patients have been there for 2+ days!

Family member after long wait was put on a temp ward set up for people from A&E waiting for beds in hospital - to avoid trolley waits I suppose - they were there 7 days no one seem to own the ward or take responsibility.

Every time family visited no food or liquids, beds soils -blood urine and waste -existing meds not given - without family going in every day think it would have killed them and condition that sent them there an infection not treated. Family went politely ballistic and they found a bed on ward by evening - ward were horrified at state of my relative - he made huge progress when they actually started treating him.

No family visits think he'd have died. There was clearly a bed shortage - probably as they struggle to discharge due to lack of care - but their short term solution/work around was in end very dangerous as they were left there with not enough staff trying to monitor - but they were not trollies in corridor so assume on paper it was sorted.

My mother needs a TAVI. A life saving procedure to replace a heart valve. Without it her prognosis is as bad as or worse than the worst cancers. She was diagnosed in October, heart failure is usually total in 12 to 18 months. She has her pre-op appointment in early March at a London centre 10s of miles from her home.

For the pre-op appointment she had to book a blood test to take place on the morning of it. She is 87 and not great on the computer. She was told "no, we won't do it for you, find someone to do it for you". I did it but nevertheless the little jobsworth she spoke to had made her cry.

The second hurdle is a lung function test. This has to be booked at her local hospital by her GP. The waiting list is evidently 18 to 49 weeks. Computah sez.

Mother's quality of life is fabulous. On the ball, very fit until this, brilliant social life, still holidaying abroad up until now. Younger, third husband.

If she doesn't get the lung function test, she can't have the TAVI. I reckon by mid March thousands will have been spent on pre procedures and MDT meetings. Not very worthwhile if she's dead by the time they do the lung function test or by then too ill to have it.

Naturally, I shall pay for it if they don't get a wriggle on in the next few weeks.

Now compare and contrast, mother worked from 15/16 until she was 70. She is 5'2" and weighs 8st 8lb, on her 87th birthday she could do the splits and other ballet steps with more grace than most 27 year olds. She has never received a benefit and still pays tax. If she were 35, had barely worked and 6st overweight, due to eating donuts and sausage rolls she'd be given free slimming world classes and bariatric surgery.

The system is bizarre. The mismanagement cannot continually be blamed on lack of resources when so often the resources are pee'd up the wall.

@RhubarbGingerJam what I'd have wanted to know in those circumstances would have been what the managers were doing. Probably compiling data and sitting in meetings about CQUINs, risk registers and drafting chest feeding leaflets, and drawing up proposals for another rainbow crossing.

I'm not sure if this is mentioned in this post, but this poor woman DIED last month after going to A&E with a severe headache.

She was found collapsed under her coat 22 hours after arriving 😢😢😢😢

www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/10/nottingham-inquiry-launched-into-death-of-woman-found-unconscious-in-ae

Hmmm. It would appear that it's only acceptable to criticise the sainted NHS when it's clear it's a middle-management and funding issue. Not when their is staff laziness going on (which it seems like a strong possibility in this instance).

Not sure why people are trying to minimise the experience of the OP when she is there, and you are not.

(Or was. I hope it's 'was' and OP's child is better).

I went into A&e with a stomach ache a few weeks ago. it hurt but wasn’t awful, I could still talk and walk and drink and eat. I thought the receptionist might tell me to go home as I didn’t feel serious enough to be there, but it had been a few days and painkillers weren’t doing anything to take the pain off. Sure other people wondered what I was doing there and probably angry I was taking time away from their precious darlings when I looked fine.

turns out my liver was failing and I was going yellow as I sat there. Still felt fine, but once they got my blood tests back they were fantastic about getting me into a bed and juggling the schedule to get me into emergency surgery two days later. A&e experience took 10 hours but honestly I feel like everyone was doing the best they could and that I still got good care.

@RosesAndHellebores honestly at time it was getting them treated and home and then support in place was the priority and it was such a strain with just that on family - that visit left problems and coping with those takes up most family energy - nothing runs smoothly with NHS care at home either.

@CantFindTheBeat read that and it's both very sad and worryingly not surprising.

Care in NHS is so very variable - depends on postcode , hospital ward and even who's on that day.

Or they could have been dealing with actual staff management, facilities management, budgetary management, rostering, HR and sickness issues, future-proofing, investment planning, service improvements.....?

I do work in the NHS, I'm one of the 'middle managers' that everyone seem so het up about even existing. I try my damned hardest to make improvements to services on the same funding we've had for years, with significantly less staff, and in some cases (ASD CAMHS for example) an over 3000% increase in the number of referrals. It's Sunday night and I'm about to log on and do some more work - I can't remember the last time I had a day off, OK I work from home but most days I log on before 6am and log off about 9pm - anything I do over and above 37.5 is UNPAID. All the pension contributions in the world aren't going to make up for that one.

I was taken in my ambulance a few weeks ago after having acute chest pains and feeling sick and odd. The ECG at home showed abnormalities and they took me for tests. I was taken to a nd e where I waited in agony for five hours. They took bloods eventually and told me it would be another four hours before the results. It was midnight by then . I decided that as I was still alive then I can't be to much of a worry so left without treatment as I couldn't stand being in there any longer